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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592834">and if your life won't wait</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperfix8ed/pseuds/hyperfix8ed'>hyperfix8ed</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>return from the ashes you call [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(after a brief stint otherwise), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ben Hargreeves Lives, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Drug Addiction, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, No Incest, Not Beta Read We Die Like Ben, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, comic elements - will be explained as the story unfolds, follows ben klaus and vanya from ages 17-23 ish, kind of</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:46:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,756</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592834</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyperfix8ed/pseuds/hyperfix8ed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"On October 1st, 1989, a little boy died and was born (in that order)."</p><p>Klaus' power was never seeing ghosts. That was simply the result of The Girl's impulsive decision to never let any of the seven children destined to end the world cross her threshold. </p><p>When Ben Hargreeves finds himself resurrected 17 years later, he and Klaus realize very quickly what a man like Reginald Hargreeves would do with the information that his child soldiers can't die. They run a few months earlier then they had planned. Vanya's just along for the ride. </p><p>(A story of laughing in the face of death, trauma, addiction and above all else: family bonding)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Hargreeves &amp; Klaus Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves &amp; Vanya Hargreeves, The Hargreeves Family</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>return from the ashes you call [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017100</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>129</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. prologue: the end.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <em>"come on, come on, come on I said,<br/>(save me) get me the hell out of here,<br/>(save me) too young to die, and my dear,<br/>(you can't) if you can hear me just walk away and-"</em>
</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>cw: very brief descriptions of a stillborn child and canon typical death/afterlife talk. this prologue can very easily be skipped if that is triggering to you.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On October 1st, 1989, a little boy died and was born (in that order). The immaculate conception by which he was made did not protect his heart from stopping mere moments after it came into existence, and he was dead before he could take his first breath. The woman who birthed him sat alone in her house and cried over his quiet body, the one she couldn’t have created but was here anyway, cold and lifeless and so, so small. He would have been considered stillborn if he hadn’t gasped awake a few minutes later, his little lungs trying to scream without much luck.</p><p>Somewhere, a girl sat down in a field and wondered if that had been a mistake. </p><p>On December 18th, 1994, when his new nanny Grace scolded him for wandering through the halls by himself, Number Four Hargreeves was very upset. </p><p>“Wasn’t by myself,” he pouted. He scuffed his footed pajama clad feet into the hardwood floor and looked so certain that Grace did a quick scan of the hallway to be sure he hadn’t brought another one of the children along with him. But her temperature readers matched her cameras, and Number Four was alone. </p><p>“Lying isn’t nice, dear,” Grace reminded him, intending to bring him back to bed and be done with it, but he stomped his foot and pointed to a completely empty spot.</p><p>“I’m not lying, Miss Grace! Miss Bella is right there, and,” he cut himself off with a deep breath as he rose in volume. “You’re not nice for pretending she isn’t! She’s been here longer, she’s in charge!”</p><p>Grace had been programmed with responses to give whenever the children asked about their old nannies. It was only natural they would be curious. But this seemed different, and Grace was also programmed to notify Reginald whenever the children exhibited something out of the ordinary.</p><p>“Let’s go talk to your father about Miss Bella,” she said with a smile, picking Number Four up with ease and letting him cling to her.</p><p>“Miss Bella won’t pick me up anymore,” he mumbled into her hair, his indignation from earlier forgotten. “None of the nannies but you will. That’s not nice either.”</p><p>The Girl heard this, and realized all at once what she had done. </p><p>On July 12th, 2002, Klaus Hargreeves died for the second time after falling ass-over-elbows down a staircase wearing his mother’s best heels. The Girl felt his presence and sighed. She would do her best not to be annoyed with him, she decided. After all, this was a problem of her own creation, over a decade in the making. </p><p>She found him laying down on his back with his head on his hands, stretched out and smiling, more peaceful than he’d ever been in life. Enjoying the silence. </p><p>The Girl sighed again. </p><p>“Klaus,” she said, ignoring the full body flinch he gave at the sound of her voice. “It’s time we talked.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>the title is from "Dead!" by mcr, the chapter name and lyrics in summary are from "The End." also by mcr. this is not a songfic, but i am a homosexual with mental illnesses, and i literally only listen to my chemical romance, so almost all the titles will be taken from various songs off the black parade. also, i refer to the god of the umbrella academy universe as "The Girl" because i am a danger days stan first and a human being second. </p><p>follow me on tumblr @fivenb and leave me a comment :) </p><p>note: the dates aren’t canon based or significant at all BUT my half birthday is one of these dates and the first person who guesses my zodiac sign gets a prize</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. tongue tied and oh so squeamish</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <em>"you never fell in love,<br/>did you get what you deserve?<br/>the ending of your life.<br/>and if you get to heaven,<br/>i'll be here waiting, baby"</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Ben Hargreeves wakes up.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>check end notes for cw</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Ben Hargreeves woke from the dead, it wasn’t as dramatic as he thought it should be. He was in agonizing pain, then he was dead, and then he wasn’t. Now he was laying down on a metal table, which seemed about right. </p><p>Ben blinked up at the ceiling and tried to get his bearings. It was harder than it should have been. His head was pounding and his thoughts came sluggishly. There was a sharp smell in the air, but he couldn’t quite place it. He felt weak, which sent a bolt of panic down his spine, and instinctively he closed down hard on the Horror to keep it from taking advantage. Luckily, it didn’t seem interested. It was deeper in its own dimension then Ben had gotten used to lately, like it had better things to pay attention to. He breathed a sigh of relief and began to sit up. As he did, he realized two very important things. </p><p>Firstly, Klaus was in the room with him. Ben couldn’t see him very well from his Creepy Metal Table, as he was calling it in his brain, but he could still make out the shape of his brother crouched by the door. Klaus’ entire body shook with nervous energy as he fiddled with the knob. Ben’s brain was still too fuzzy to figure out what he was doing, but knowing Klaus was there helped him come to his second realization: the sharp smell permeating the air was weed. Like, a lot of weed. There was a haze in the air that Ben had attributed to his general fogginess, but on closer inspection seemed to originate from the joint dangling off his brother’s lips. Its still smoldering end traced patterns into the air with smoke as it wobbled dangerously on its perch, and Ben watched dazedly for a few moments before blinking the fog away and deciding to stand up. </p><p>In doing so, Ben realized a third very important thing: there seemed to be a lot less blood in his body than is generally recommended. His vision blacked out around the edges and a prickly, pins and needles feeling made its way through his upper body. Ben gripped the Creepy Metal Table with both hands and took deep breaths. He supposed blood loss explained why he felt like someone had replaced all his nerves with cotton swabs. </p><p>After his heart had managed to restore at least a little bit of blood everywhere it should be, he straightened up and looked back at Klaus. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he hadn’t noticed Ben’s predicament, continuing his task of… whatever he was doing. Ben hadn’t quite put that together just yet. </p><p>“Klaus,” Ben tried to say. It came out scratched and quiet, and Klaus gave no sign of hearing him at all. He cleared his throat. “<em>Klaus</em>.”</p><p>That got a reaction. His brother made a noise between a laugh and a whine, curling one hand tighter around the handle and the other around his joint. His hand shook as he took what might have actually been the biggest hit Ben had ever seen. </p><p>“Auditory hallucinations,” Klaus mused from the ground. He still hadn’t looked up. “That’s new.”</p><p>Ben blinked. He felt like he’d been dropped in on a conversation halfway through. “What are you talking about?”</p><p>His brother’s face was an unnerving combination of grim acceptance, unyielding panic, and a blankness Ben hoped was only from the weed as he reluctantly turned to face him. </p><p>“Visual hallucinations too?” Klaus said nonsensically, tilting his head. “Very cool, thank you brain! Maybe they did have a point when they said drugs are bad. Who knew?”</p><p>“What?” Ben asked, now completely lost, but Klaus kept rambling anyway. </p><p>“I guess you could just be from this specific weed, not from spending my formative years purposefully hindering my neurological development,” he said in a tone that was as light as it was broken, a common theme when it came to Klaus. “Or maybe I’m just having a complete psychotic break,” he added in a singsong tone as he looked Ben up and down. </p><p>Ben just stared at him, willing his brain to process any of those words and failing. He needed to say something to Klaus, he knew that. He had to explain what was going on.</p><p>“Uh,” he started. </p><p>There was a pause as they both looked at each other and Ben tried to remember how the English language worked. He didn’t think he’d have the right words even before he lost enough blood to fill a Big Gulp or three. </p><p> “Hm... yeah,” Klaus decided with a giggle. “Psychotic break seems pretty likely at this point. Please go away, hallucinatory version of my dead brother, I need to focus on being not locked in a room with your literal fucking corpse anymore. <em>Danke!</em>” He turned back to the door, and Ben finally realized what he was doing. Klaus was using a bobby pin that must have been pilfered from Allison to pick the lock.</p><p>Because he had been locked in.</p><p>With Ben’s… corpse.</p><p>Suddenly, the puzzle pieces floating around in his head came crashing together. The blood loss, the Creepy Metal Table, the grief on Klaus’ face - Ben had <em>died</em>. He had known in the abstract, but it was only then he truly realized what that meant. </p><p>Ben was dead.</p><p>And now he wasn’t. </p><p>“Oh shit,” Ben breathed, taking a few steps forward. “Klaus, I’m - you’re not… seeing my ghost, or whatever, I’m-”</p><p>Bad choice of words. “Of course I’m not seeing your ghost,” Klaus agreed pleasantly. “I’m wildly, <em>stupidly</em> high for that exact reason.”</p><p>“No,” Ben tried. “I’m real.”</p><p>“That’s what a hallucination would say.”</p><p>“Klaus-”</p><p>“Honestly, I’m kind of impressed it took this long for the trauma to catch up to me, I really feel like I should have had hallucinations years ago.”</p><p>“Dude, just listen-”</p><p>“Oooo, maybe all the ghosts are hallucinations, and this whole time I’ve just been, I don't know, creative? That’d be hilarious.”</p><p>“Could you stop for one second?”</p><p>“Do people sell antipsychotics on the street? Probably. That would be fun to try. I bet Mark would have some, that guy is <em>nuts</em>-”</p><p>“Klaus!” Ben snapped. “Shut. The hell. <em>Up</em>. I’m <em>real</em>, I’m not a hallucination, or a ghost, I died, and there was this, like, <em>girl</em>, who seemed kind of rude for no reason, and a black and white forest or something, and I don’t know how, but I’m back now! And I’m tired! So shut up! Just stop talking!” </p><p>His chest heaved as he recovered from his outburst. He hadn’t gotten mad enough for the Horror to peek out, but he did feel light-headed. Ben reached out to a nearby counter to steady himself and his hand knocked against a box of extra gloves, sending it sliding across the smooth metal. Klaus tracked its movement, wide eyes flying back to Ben’s face when it stopped. </p><p>“Oh,” Klaus said. He looked about as out of his depth as Ben felt. His brother reached his pale hand out hesitantly and seemed to very deliberately not flinch away when he made contact with Ben’s wrist. His fingers searched for a pulse in a motion that was familiar to both of them: Klaus had needed reassurance the people around him were still alive long before one of them had actually died. </p><p>That thought gave Ben pause once again. He made none of the judgment about the weed he usually would. If he could see ghosts, and one of his siblings died bloody and screaming and <em>painful</em> -</p><p>They both let out a breath when he found one.</p><p>The two brothers stared at each other for a long moment. Green eyes bore into his own, searching and hopeful and a little unfocused. His wrist felt warm where Klaus gripped it like a lifeline, and the feeling sent a shiver down his spine. Klaus was usually too cold, but apparently dying hadn’t done Ben’s central body temperature any favors.</p><p>Ben felt unsteady under the weight of everything that was happening. The tidal wave of new memories and emotions had only trickled through the shroud of shock wrapped around his mind. He was grateful for it the same way he was grateful for his comforter when he was a kid trying to hide from villains in the dark, but it also left him feeling like he was missing something. Hypervigilance and the children of the Umbrella Academy were old friends, and Ben wasn’t sure how to handle things without it. </p><p>As he looked into Klaus’ shocked face, he was overcome with an urge he hadn’t felt in a long time: he wanted to hug his brother. The thought clicked into his mind like it had always been meant to be there. He died, and he was scared and <em>cold</em>, and he wanted a hug more than he’d wanted anything in a long time, but before he could figure out how to get over seventeen years of never initiating contact with anyone but his enemies, Klaus tugged his wrist <em>hard</em> and he went stumbling into his brother’s arms anyway. </p><p>Ben wasted no time hugging him back, wrapping his arms as tightly around Klaus as he possibly could and pressing his cheek into his brother’s curly hair. Klaus positioned his arms so that one of them could snake over his shoulders and up his neck to keep his fingers pressed against Ben’s pulse, faster than it should be and probably a little weak, but there. A sob that Ben hadn’t even realized he was holding back threatened to spill out, and he tried to keep a hold on it until he felt Klaus’ lungs stuttering through a sob of his own and he couldn’t stop himself any longer. </p><p>He closed his eyes and tried not to think about any of it. </p><p>They clung to each other like little kids (scared, traumatized, broken kids - the only kids either of them had ever known). Klaus used the hand that wasn’t pressed firmly to his pulse to ball his hand in Ben’s jacket. It grounded him. He felt more present than he had since he (<em>died</em>) woke up, and he finally identified the room as what their father called the West Laboratory. It wasn’t used very often, but they all knew it was where the dead bodies that piled up during missions and weren’t fit for police inspection would end up. The Umbrella Academy’s secret morgue, tucked away somewhere within a sprawling display of wealth. </p><p>Ben wondered if he would have disappeared as easily and thoroughly as all the other bodies that had rested on the same table before him. </p><p>He suddenly noticed the feeling of dried blood on the skin beneath his sweater (cracking and itching and peeling off like a shedding snake) and he wanted to cry even more because he should be used to it (which is a terrible thought on its own) but he still wanted to scratch it off with his nails just to be rid of it. As much as he ever could be. </p><p>His brain unhelpfully reminded him that, for once, it was his own blood staining him, and he swallowed hard to choke down the bile in his mouth. He opened his eyes and focused on the sight of his brother’s heaving back instead of the images his mind wanted to conjure up. </p><p>Eventually, when their crying quieted and the boys ran out of tears, they managed to separate by a foot or two. A skinny hand wrapped around his wrist once more, but it wasn’t enough of an anchor to keep him from losing a bit of the clarity he’d achieved earlier, and he sunk a little deeper from reality. Klaus cleared his throat a little, looking at him intently, and Ben braced himself to be asked questions he didn’t have the answers for. </p><p>“You said… a girl?” Klaus asked, his voice a little strangled. Ben blinked at him. </p><p>That wasn’t really what he’d expected his brother to focus on. </p><p>“Um, yes,” Ben answered slowly. “I mean, I don’t know, it could have just been a dream, or something, but when I- yeah. There was a girl. I guess.”</p><p>He shifted uncomfortably, not liking how the words <em>‘when I died’</em> would have sounded on his tongue if he’d managed to say them. </p><p>“Oh,” Klaus said, sounding a little lost. He wasn’t looking at Ben. There was an odd look on his face, like something was dawning on him but he didn’t know what yet.</p><p>Then he blinked, and it was gone. </p><p>“Was she hot?” Klaus grinned, clapping his free hand against Ben’s shoulder like a maniac. “Nice, man, gettin it on’ beyond the grave, Mary Kelly style.”</p><p>Ben rolled his eyes, thankful for a little levity. “Mary Shelley. You know it’s Mary Shelley.” </p><p>“I know absolutely nothing at all.”</p><p>“I regret telling you that Mary Shelley, the woman who wrote a book so influential it created an entirely new genre at like, 16 years of age, might have possibly lost her virginity on top of her mother’s grave,” he said, hiding a smile. Klaus’ eyes narrowed in a way that screamed mischief. </p><p>Ben braced himself for Mary Shelley’s memory to be disrespected by whatever was about to come out of his brother’s mouth. </p><p>“I’m going to summon Mary Kelly’s ghost and ask her if she really did have sex over her mother’s dead body.” </p><p>That startled a small laugh out of him. “Cool,” Ben said, letting the smile spread across his face. “May I also talk to Mary Shelley’s ghost, to fulfill what feels like a lifelong dream of mine?”</p><p>“No you may not, because my lifelong dream is to fuck a ghost, and it sounds like Miss Frankenstein would be into that.” </p><p>“I think you could spare a moment from your creepy ghost sex and let me talk to the coolest person in history.”</p><p>Klaus wiggled his eyebrows. “I think you’re underestimating how alluring Mary Kelly would find me,” he winked. </p><p>Ben let out a real laugh at the thought of Mary Shelley finding his scrawny ass brother alluring, and it wasn’t that funny, but he kept laughing. Klaus joined him, giggling at his own joke, and though their laughter was a bit manic and tinged with bemusement at the whole situation, it really was nice to just laugh with his brother like nothing was wrong. It was so nice Ben didn’t even care Klaus was very clearly trying to distract the both of them from their inevitable breakdowns, because, well, it was working. </p><p>At least it was working, until a quiet knock on the door brought them back to Earth. The boys went silent.</p><p>“Klaus?” called a muffled voice. Ben’s heart clenched when he recognized it. “Dad’s going to call again. Soon. I’m- I’m sorry, I-” There was the sound of a long, shaking breath. “What… what do I tell him?”</p><p>“Vanya,” Klaus breathed. He looked to Ben as if maybe he would have a plan. “The fuck do I say?” he hissed under his breath. Ben shook his head wildly, trying to communicate <em>‘I have no fucking idea’</em> without using his voice. Klaus made a small panicked noise that effectively answered <em>‘well, neither do I, Ben, because this situation is really fucking weird’</em> before his eyes landed on something and he seemed to have an idea. </p><p>“I’m almost done busting out of here, Van,” he said, letting go of Ben’s wrist at last to dive for the bobby pin he’d abandoned on the ground. He picked up the joint while he was at it. “When he calls, tell him nothing’s changed. I’ll be out in a second. Did you get your side taken care of?” </p><p>Even after the extremely insane day he’d had, that managed to surprise him. Vanya had never been a rule-breaker, not because she respected the rules for what they were like Luther did, but because she was too scared of the outcome. He didn’t even know she knew how to pick locks. </p><p>“I did,” she confirmed. Klaus breathed a sigh of relief and set back to work on the door. “It was like you said, I couldn’t get to the handle to unlock it, but you should be able to get it to swing open now.” </p><p>Ben furrowed his brow in confusion. Klaus noticed and mimed hitting something with a hammer, then pointed at the door. Ben’s blood ran ice-cold at the reminder of how far their father would go to get what he wanted. </p><p>“Thanks, sis,” Klaus said from the floor. He leaned his head against the door while he worked. He looked so tired. “Be a dear and stick around? I need to… tell you something,” he added, glancing where Ben stood. There was a pause. </p><p>“Yeah, I can- yeah. I will,” Vanya sounded so surprised that it almost covered the tremor in her voice. “Okay.”</p><p>“Okay,” Klaus agreed, concentrating on the task at hand as best he could with enough weed in his system to knock out any lesser man. </p><p><em>Okay</em>, Ben thought to himself, staring at his hands. <em>I’ll be okay.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>tws:<br/>references to canon typical violence, abuse, and death (but like. he got better)<br/>somewhat graphic descriptions of shock/disassociation/derealization<br/>emetophobia warning, nothing graphic but ben is not having a good day, and he nearly loses his lunch a few times<br/>Klaus specific warnings: underage marijuana usage, character thinking they’re having a hallucination and is somewhat dismissive about it, some jokes about sex/attraction from a minor character. lmk if i forgot anything or if you’d like me to tag for anything specific! </p><p>i know this chapter is confusing and i know you have several questions! they'll be answered in the next chapter (or... not) i promise. thanks for reading!</p><p>next chapter: vanya is just Having A Bad Day / what the FUCK happened to ben</p><p>find me on tumblr @fivenb !</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. words i thought i'd choke on</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>
  <em>”to un-explain the unforgivable,<br/>drain all the blood and give the kids a show.<br/>by streetlight, this dark night<br/>a séance down below”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Vanya Hargreeves finds a reason.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i generally put content warnings in the end notes, and there is a more succinct version there if you need to check it, but for this chapter i want to give specific warnings before you read.<br/>this is likely the darkest part of the entire story because it includes a graphic death scene and extremely gorey details due to the nature of the Horror. the scene came out Very Gross and if you do not want to read graphic descriptions of blood (a lot of blood), death (both minor and major characters), child abuse and vomit, skip from the * in front of “When the noise died down, Vanya steeled herself and ran to check on Ben“ to "'Klaus,' she called through the door". there is a summary in the end notes if you want to skip this section. this chapter also depicts the shock and grief that comes after losing a loved one in a traumatic way. again, there are more warnings in the end notes, but since this chapter is so graphic compared to the rest of the story, i wanted to warn you ahead of time. take care of yourselves, and if you have questions because you didn’t want to read the full chapter, let me know and i’ll answer. i promise we will get to the family bonding of it all soon. </p><p>and here https://atalana.tumblr.com/post/183540818647 is the tumblr post i reference when writing about the hargreeves mansion. in this story vanya and klaus both still live in their tiny closet bedrooms. my personal hc is that numbers 1-4 were originally supposed to live in the hall we see in the show, with 5-7 up in the attic (due to having destructive powers/being able to blink down easily) but reginald split klaus’ room with vanya to isolate her from the only siblings she got along with and possibly because he’s a bad person who just fucking hated them both. then sometime during klaus’ young adulthood, he managed to take over vanya’s room.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Vanya Hargreeves was a kid, she used to dream of running away. </p><p>It took different forms. Sometimes, she dreamt of running away like they do in the movies: packing up her violin and her extra socks and stowing away on the back of a train car or a boat destined to a new land. Other times, she broke away from her father’s grasp and jumped into action with her brothers and sister despite his warnings that she was only ordinary, and saved the day with the powers she’d had all along, and together they left it all behind to take on the world and go to elementary school and they never forgot about her ever again. Sometimes her dreams weren’t about where she ran off to, but a birds eye view of her family after she left them behind with nothing but the knowledge that she had disappeared. (Sometimes they even missed her). </p><p>She stopped having these dreams, (she stopped having any dreams, in any sense of the word, because as she grew so did her anxiety and the dosage to control it), but she never forgot them. </p><p>Vanya knew she wanted to run away. However, Vanya also knew she was seventeen years old, five foot one, and completely unprepared for almost any situation the real world could possibly throw at her. If the real world only wanted her to play a violin in a very average fashion, stand silently in every single room she found herself in, and waste a lot of time and energy wishing that things were different, then maybe she would have a chance. She was well versed in doing all of those things. Unfortunately, the real world tends to expect different skills out of people, such as knowing how much things cost and building interpersonal relationships with one’s peers. Vanya only wore different versions of the same outfit until she was sixteen and gathered the courage to purchase a single pair of blue jeans. She felt in no way ready to leave the nest. </p><p>In darker moments when she gave up all illusions of optimism, Vanya would lie awake and think about how perfectly Reginald’s isolation had worked on all of them. Leaving the academy was going to be near impossible. Not because he would stop them, he wasn’t dumb enough to try to keep a hold on superpowered children he didn’t have any legal right to, but because they had never been allowed to learn how to survive without him.</p><p>Still, the year the remaining Hargreeves siblings turned seventeen, something in the air changed. It wasn’t that running away was a new idea for them. They’d all thought, whispered and wondered about it over the years. It hung unspoken in the air every time they squeezed into a booth at Griddy’s or watched Klaus climb down the fire escape and make a run for it just to see what would happen. </p><p>“This is nice,” they would laugh. <em>We could do this for real</em> they would never say. </p><p>Secret thoughts turned into genuine considerations turned into a trip to the city library to wander aimlessly through the nonfiction aisles until an underpaid employee took pity on their strange group of uniformed teenagers and pointed out where to find the books on careers and self improvement. Leaving wasn’t just a possibility, it was a fast approaching reality, and everyone knew it. </p><p>Annoyingly, that didn’t actually mean they knew <em>how</em> to do it. </p><p>After their last birthday, Vanya had found herself being looked to by her siblings for help more than she had for the previous seventeen years combined. As the only one of them exempt from the expectations of their father, she could do research and make phone calls that everyone else would have been punished for. She had also gotten Pogo to ask Father if she could apply to a music school, and when he agreed, was given the greatest gift of all: the location of everyone’s birth certificates, passports and homeschool transcripts. Pogo had taken her with him to retrieve hers. </p><p>“In three days,” he’d said into the silence of the storage room. He wasn’t looking at her. “I will be shutting down all security cameras in this wing of the house from twelve to twelve fifty nine am. For maintenance.” The words settled between them: an apology, an escape. </p><p>Vanya hadn’t looked at him either, instead focusing on the file labelled Number Seven in her hands. “Thank you. For getting these for me.”</p><p>He held the door open for her as they walked out. “I hope they help, Miss Vanya.”</p><p>It wasn’t lost on Vanya, as she watched Klaus sneak down the hallway with four large files hugged to his chest, that the greatest instance of teamwork ever displayed by the Umbrella Academy was working towards the goal of leaving. It also wasn’t lost on her that the siblings who had ignored her for years because she was ordinary were now relying on her for that very fact. She couldn’t tell if it was resentment or pride she was feeling at her new role, and she didn’t really like thinking about it. It hurt when Allison would compliment her hair just to link arms and whisper questions about taxes under her breath, or when Diego frowned at the location of the apartment listing she was considering and gave her pepper spray <em>’since you don’t have powers or training to protect yourself’</em>, but she was used to feeling ordinary. When her sister beamed at her in thanks or three of her brothers crammed into her room at once to plan, she realized she wasn’t at all used to feeling needed. </p><p>(Ben’s behavior towards her hadn’t really changed. He was as kind to her as he’d ever been. The only difference was that for once, she felt she had something to offer in return.)</p><p>For all her planning and research, Vanya didn’t know what she wanted to do when the three months until her eighteenth birthday were over. Allison had her heart set on Hollywood, and had already locked down an agent that would represent her. Diego had his application for the police academy filled out and ready to be sent in the moment he turned eighteen and Ben worked for hours narrowing down a list of colleges a mile long. Even Klaus said he had a friend he could crash with until he figured something else out. (Luther, for his part, wouldn’t acknowledge that any of it was happening). But Vanya found herself paralyzed by the array of options out there for her whenever she thought about what she wanted to do. She loved the violin, but had no confidence that her ability would prove adequate enough to make it in the music world, and she hadn’t actually applied to anything. Just the idea of keeping up in a normal classroom overwhelmed her beyond belief, so college was out, and most programs not part of a college expected you to live at home. Until she had her own home, there would be no music program.</p><p>Having nowhere to go didn’t stop her from packing her meager belongings into a duffle bag, though. Vanya had been living out of her bag since she had gotten her documents together. She knew she couldn’t leave until she was eighteen and had a real plan, but the promise of actually being able to go kept her from resigning herself to spending the rest of her life silently haunting the halls of the mansion. </p><p>Of course, anxiety pulsed through her like it always did when something changed, but it took a backseat to sheer <em>excitement</em>. Whenever something went wrong, whenever a mission left her alone for days on end or her father brushed past her without a single word of acknowledgement, she consoled herself with the image of her bags tucked away in her closet. <em>You can always leave,</em> they promised, <em>you could leave right now, and no one could stop you</em>. The fear was overshadowed by the thrill of having choices for the first time in her life, and she was enjoying every moment she got to make them. </p><p>Vanya knew there would be a moment, sometime very soon, where she would find a reason to start her adult life. </p><p>But right now, she wanted to go hide like a little kid under an old comforter in her lost brother’s empty room. She promised once again it would be the last time. </p><p>It had been a bad day.</p><p>A mission summoned her family away at five am (and a yawning Luther had summoned Klaus specifically, dead asleep from whatever he’d taken the night before) and didn’t return them until dinner time, leaving her to wander around all day and pick through two lonely meals. No one filled her in, but she could tell something had gone wrong by the way their father was fuming when everyone filed inside. They’d eaten dinner together in complete silence. Missions often meant a happier evening as the heroes of the Umbrella Academy came down from the adrenaline of a job well done, but tonight it was painful to sit through. Luther and Diego radiated shame and anger so strongly she knew they were just waiting for an excuse to throw fists at each other. Allison had her cutlery in a death grip and never once looked up from her plate. Nobody finished their meals. Klaus and Ben hadn’t made any attempt to eat by the time they were finally dismissed. Ben hadn’t even picked up his silverware. He just sat there, staring ahead with unseeing eyes. Afterwards, before she could try and talk to them, Ben disappeared up the stairs and Klaus ducked out the door to find something that would make him stop shaking.</p><p>Vanya never felt more useless and ordinary then when she watched her siblings struggle without any idea how to help. She knew from experience that trying to talk to them when they were like this would only lead to them lashing out or shutting down, and even if they didn’t, what could she possibly say to make it better? When they were ready, they would seek out what they needed. Allison and Luther, Diego and Mom, Klaus and Ben - they knew what to do for each other. No one needed to hear from her.</p><p>(Her and Five used to help each other, sometimes. Though she didn’t have a lot to offer besides a shoulder to rage at, he had chosen her anyway. But Five was gone now, so it didn’t matter, and it shouldn’t hurt so much still, but it did. Of course it did.)</p><p>As it were, the siblings went their separate ways after dinner and spent the rest of the night hiding in their rooms. They all knew there would be hell to pay soon. Even Vanya was often subject to the consequences of their mistakes on missions. Father seemed to forget she wasn’t part of the team if his chosen discipline involved anything she had access to, like freetimes, or food. Leaving them to stew in anticipation had to be on purpose, she thought, because it was often the worst part. There was always at least one night they had to spend wondering when and what the punishment would be. Occasionally, weeks would pass by with tense silence and minute flinches every time Reginald spoke before (apropos of absolutely nothing) he would finally announce their penance for some near forgotten slight. </p><p>Vanya spent a long time laying in her own bed before she gave up and decided to move to Five’s in search of comfort. She had been listening carefully to try and pick up on any sign from Klaus’ room next door that he’d made it home safe, but eventually she accepted that he either would not be returning or she had already missed him. Either way, the anxiety and longing clawing at her made the notion of staying in her stuffy room until morning unbearable, so she weighed the worst possible outcomes of being caught. After determining Reginald probably wouldn’t notice, or care, Vanya left. </p><p>She had been doing this a lot in the past year or so. No one had touched it at first, back when they still thought he would return. Mom never stopped cleaning the room and washing the sheets every week. But for the rest of them, the years went on, the hope ran out, and the hole he’d left in their family didn’t get any smaller. The nights she felt Five’s absence so strongly it burned, she would risk sneaking upstairs to his bedroom to spend the night and avoid Ben’s sympathetic gaze from across the hall. Being in his old room, surrounded by the life he had left behind and the proof he had been there (and he had loved her, in his own way) sometimes soothed the grief enough to sleep. </p><p>As she walked up the stairs towards the third floor, she nearly ran into Ben making his way down. They both had a habit of being too quiet to hear coming. The siblings blinked at each other, feeling caught by one another even though they weren’t doing anything wrong. Neither of them really knew how to talk to each other sometimes, they were close in a way that didn’t involve much talking, and though he was always kind to her there was still the distance between superhero and ordinary. Ben had his arms wrapped around his torso like a vice. Vanya picked at her lips and looked away. </p><p>“Hey,” he finally said, breaking the silence. “Heading to Five’s room?”</p><p>Vanya flushed a bit in embarrassment. Ben didn’t judge her for stowing away in Five’s room every so often, but she still wished he didn’t know. It felt like a vulnerability, like exposing a bare neck and waiting for teeth to bite down. </p><p>“Yes,” she said quietly. “Checking on Klaus?” </p><p>He hummed his confirmation, quirking his mouth into a sardonic little half-smile. “Figured if he tries to get in through his own window, he’s going to fall. Again.” Vanya guessed there was more to it, but she played along and huffed out a small laugh. The fire escape that led to her room didn’t extend to his, but Klaus still used it whenever the fancy struck him. He’d wake her up banging on the glass if he wasn’t sober enough to climb to his own window. If he was really wasted, he might go for it anyway. They’d had to pull him in from the ground floor awning more than once. She’d started unlocking her window for him after the first time, but he seemed to forget sometimes. </p><p>They stood facing each other for another moment, unsure of how to end the interaction. Vanya noticed with a frown that Ben’s arms hadn’t moved at all, and his face was pale and sweating. He looked like he was in pain. </p><p>“Are you… alright?” she asked quietly, cursing herself for how unsure she sounded. </p><p>“I’m okay, Vanya,” he reassured her. The response was clearly automatic, but his smile was more genuine when she looked at him. “Don’t worry about me.”</p><p>“Is it…” she hesitated, feeling out of her lane, but Ben stayed patient as ever while he waited. “Was it the mission? Does it want to come out?”</p><p>His face darkened. “Yeah,” he confessed, his grip somehow getting tighter. “Earlier… there was too much going on. Too many civilians, and blood, it would have been awful. I didn’t let it.”</p><p>“Dad was pissed,” she guessed.</p><p>“<em>Really</em> pissed,” Ben confirmed. “Luther, too. But I knew if I… I don’t know, after…” he trailed off and shrugged dejectedly. “Well. You know.”</p><p>Vanya didn’t know, but she nodded anyway. “My extra weighted blanket is still somewhere in Klaus’ room if you want it,” she offered. </p><p>Ben’s face broke out in a real smile at that. “Thanks, Vanya,” he said softly. He tilted his head and his body, stiff with unease as he was, towards her slightly in an awkward movement that almost resembled a bow. “I’ll look for it. Try to actually get some sleep tonight, okay?”</p><p>“You too,” she said. For some reason, (maybe because he was in pain and exhausted but still looking out for her and Five used to do the same exact stupid thing and God, she was missing him so badly she could cry, or maybe it was something else entirely, maybe just for the sake of it), Vanya looked into her brother’s tired eyes and felt an urge to say she loved him. The urge was near alien to her-- she wasn’t certain those words had ever been said under this roof. She’d give anything to say them to Five, and kicked herself daily for not doing it when she could, but never truly thought about saying it to anyone else. (She’s always wanted to hear it, though). </p><p>“Goodnight, Ben,” she said instead, and if it came out a little choked, that was okay. He smiled at her anyways.</p><p>“Yeah,” he replied. Their shoulders bumped a little as they passed each other. His skin felt feverish even through their shirts. It made her nervous. “Goodnight.”</p><p>As soon as she was out of his sight, Vanya fled the rest of the way upstairs. The whirlwind of emotions she’d been feeling all night roared in her ears, and she barely made it inside Five’s room before the first tear fell. His door slammed behind her, though she thought she had barely touched it, and her heart froze as the sound reverberated through the attic. She waited, tears still falling from her closed eyes, in complete silence until she was certain her father wouldn’t be coming to punish her for the noise. Then, she burrowed into Five’s bed and let herself cry as loud and long as she wanted. When she finally began to run out of tears, she was so <em>fucking</em> exhausted from the day she’d had that her eyes closed and her thoughts slowed. </p><p>It wasn’t exactly characteristic of her to cry this much, she realized dimly. If she had been a little more awake, she might have remembered leaving her nightly dosage on her bedside table. She might have even gone to retrieve it. But as it was, her sobs tapered away and Vanya drifted off to sleep. </p><p>Everything seemed to happen very quickly after that. </p><p>Vanya startled awake. Still disoriented from sleep, she checked the clock, assuming her internal clock had awoken her for breakfast. To her surprise, it was a little after two am, about three hours after she’d dozed off. She stared at it uncomprehendingly. What had woken her up so suddenly? Why was her heart pounding? There had been no nightmare, she recalled, and nothing seemed to be amiss. Still though, she felt uneasy. Her breath caught in her throat as she glanced around the dark room.</p><p>Then, she heard it.</p><p>Someone was climbing the fire escape.</p><p>Her heart lurched and she knew without a doubt that had been what woke her. From the sound of it, whoever was using the fire escape was still close to the ground, close enough that she shouldn’t be able to hear but for some reason could anyway. </p><p>She felt paralyzed in fear as the noises grew closer. Was it Klaus? It could be, but Klaus almost never reentered using this side of the building. A lifetime of listening to survival training flew out the window and all she could remember was constant threats of impending danger. She had no idea what to do. </p><p>(One time, when she was younger, she’d had a nightmare. She couldn’t remember it in the morning, but she knew someone had attacked her, and she was powerless to do anything about it. It scared her. She’d told Five about it the next day.</p><p>“No one’s going to attack you, Seven,” he reminded her. “And if they do, just find me or one of the others. We’d stop them.”</p><p>“What if you’re not there?” she asked, with no idea what would come to be.</p><p>“We will be,” he promised even as he rolled her eyes at her. “Don’t worry about that.”</p><p>It had turned out to be a lie, of course, but it was one that helped her sleep at night: her brothers and sister would be there to protect her.)</p><p>In a moment of clarity, she leapt out of Five’s bed and dashed to the hallway. She looked between Ben’s door and the stairs, wondering for a split second what to do. The rattling of the window behind her made her choice for her as she imagined being caught on the stairs with nowhere to go, and she hoped to God that Ben had returned to his own room. His door closed behind her as she heard Five’s window slide open. </p><p>Ben’s bed was empty.</p><p>“No,” she moaned under her breath. “<em>Fuck.</em>” She leaned her ear against the door, praying to anything out there that it was just Klaus. </p><p>“Vanya?” called a small voice. Vanya whirled around, slamming her hand over her mouth to muffle her yelp of fear. Ben peered blearily at her over the book he was reading by the light spilling through the window. “What’s wrong?”</p><p>His voice was too loud. She hushed him desperately. “Someone climbed the fire escape to Five’s room. Is it Klaus?” she added hopefully. Ben shook his head in alarm. </p><p>“Klaus got busted, he’s sleeping it off in the infirmary,” he said slowly. “You’re sure someone’s breaking in?”</p><p>Before she could answer, a loud thud came from across the hall. “Goddammit,” someone whispered. “No one’s here. This must be the missing kid’s room after all.” Ben froze. </p><p>“What are we supposed to do if the target isn’t here? Sneak past two floors of security cameras?” another voice asked. </p><p>“Shut up,” the first voice replied. “Give me the floor plans. We’ll figure it out.” </p><p>Vanya’s heart thudded in her chest. “Did you hear all that?” she asked Ben.</p><p>“Most of it,” he whispered back. His back straightened and she recognized the look on his face as the one he adopted for missions. “We need to get to the others.” He closed his book and started to stand, but as he did, he doubled over in pain. Vanya rushed to his side.<br/>
“I’m fine,” Ben rasped, gripping onto her arms. “We need to go, now.” He pushed up, and even though his face was tinged with green, he still managed to stumble out the door. Vanya followed, thankful there was someone here with training and powers who knew what to do even as her mind raced with panic. They crept towards the stairs with one eye on Five’s open door, but the intruders were bent over something spread out on his desk and weren’t paying them any attention. There were two of them, she noted, a man and a woman, each wearing suits and holding giant assault rifles. She shuddered with fear. Who were these people, and what did they need those guns for? They’d almost made it to the landing when the intruders started speaking again. </p><p>“This isn’t going to work,” the man declared. </p><p>“What if we flush them out instead?” replied the woman. “With a fire, or an explosion. Should be enough.” Ben sucked in a harsh breath in front of her and they froze where they were. </p><p>“You want to risk something happening to the bomb?” the man asked. His partner hummed in response.</p><p>“It should be fine. They have fire escapes, see? All the other kids are on the second floor.  Too risky to try there, since we don’t know where they are. I say we scrap the original plan and set off an explosion downstairs, right in the middle so it doesn’t take the house down...”</p><p>“Then we intercept the target in the chaos,” he finished. “Works for me. How are we getting in?”</p><p>“Needs to be fast…” the woman mused. “Take out the front cameras and use the main entrance? It’ll destroy the stairs so they can’t investigate right away, and the noise will scare them off without casualties. We’re here without backup, we can’t take all of them at once.” </p><p>“Sure,” the man agreed, as if it were nothing more than plans to meet for lunch. “Let’s go.” There was the sound of shuffling papers and a window sliding open. Ben turned to face Vanya as soon as the window closed again.</p><p>“I’m going to go straight downstairs to wait for them,” he told her, already starting to move. “I’ll unleash the Horror on them if they don’t leave. Go get the others, and Dad. Tell them they don’t have any backup.” He tried to run, but when he almost fell down the stairs, he paused. </p><p>“Let me help you,” she blurted, ducking under Ben’s arm to act as a crutch. “I’ll get you downstairs, and then I’ll get the others.” Fuelled by adrenaline, she began half-carrying, half-dragging her brother down the stairs without waiting for an answer. He looked like he wanted to protest, but he also looked like he would collapse if someone breathed at him wrong, so he let it go. She could hear the gurgling of the Horror. It clearly wanted to come out, and she knew he didn’t like to do it, but it was still the best chance they had against armed gunmen. </p><p>Together, they made it down both sets of stairs in record time. Neither of them had ever been the fastest, but sheer panic made it possible to ignore the burning in their lungs and muscles until they finally reached the ground floor entrance. Luckily, the intruders didn’t appear to have entered yet. </p><p>“Set me down on the steps,” Ben suggested. She helped him sit so he could wait for their arrival without collapsing, ignored the pit in her stomach at how pale he looked, (reminded herself he was a superhero, he would be okay), and turned to sprint towards the second floor. </p><p>She made it up the main staircase and was rounding the corner of the first floor landing when the front doors opened. Against her will, Vanya’s feet stopped moving as her muscles locked in place from fear. Her heart beat fast in her ears. </p><p>“Hello. Do you know who I am?” she heard Ben ask calmly. “I am a member of the Umbrella Academy. I am <em>the Horror.</em> If you threaten my home, I <em>will</em> kill you.” The ice in his voice scared her. It didn’t sound like her brother. “Leave, now.”</p><p>There was a long, silent pause. </p><p>“Is this a good thing or a bad thing for us?” the man asked under his breath.</p><p>“Well,” the woman replied, cocking her gun. “It’s certainly convenient.” </p><p>Gunshots rang out and Vanya dropped to the ground with a scream. She pressed her arms over her head. A stray bullet must have hit a fusebox, she thought nonsensically, because the few lights illuminating the mansion flickered as she heard the unmistakable sound of the Horror making itself known. The guns stopped and the bangs were replaced by the shooters crying out as the Horror ripped them to shreds. She could hear Ben screaming too. They never stood a chance. </p><p>* When the noise died down, Vanya steeled herself and ran to check on Ben. She heard a pair of footsteps from her father’s quarters as well as the tell tale sign of his cane, and despite herself, she was reassured. He must have summoned Grace. They would know what to do. Her other siblings must be on their way too, and could take charge. This would all be over soon. </p><p>The relief lasted until she reached the bottom of the stairs. What waited for her there made her scream again, and the footsteps behind her sped up. The lights finally gave out, plunging the room into darkness. </p><p>It didn’t make a difference. The image of her brother lying still and broken with a hole ripped clean through his entire torso was burned into her mind. </p><p>Vanya collapsed onto the ground next to him. She might still have been screaming. She couldn’t tell over the roaring in her ears. Her hands fluttered frantically to his neck as her mother crouched next to her.</p><p>“Mom,” she choked through her sobbing. Beneath her hands, Ben gagged on the blood rising up in his throat and his whole body seized. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. She brushed her hands through his hair desperately. “Mom, his pulse is still there, you have to do something, you have to.” </p><p>Their mother pressed her hands to his wound as if she could stop the bleeding and inspected her son. After a second, she turned to look at Reginald, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs with an impassive look on his face. </p><p>“Is there anything to be done?” he asked. His tone was so unbothered, so fucking <em>casual</em> it made Vanya sick. It was as if he wasn’t seeing his son choke on his own blood after being torn apart from the inside out. </p><p>“Not likely. Many of his internal organs are damaged beyond repair, and he’s lost far too much blood,” Grace said. But she opened the medkit she’d brought with anyway, and Vanya hoped beyond hope that it would be enough, that her mom could stitch it up and make it better. Ben cried out, clearly in agony. She pulled out a syringe of what looked like pain medicine. “I’d like to make it more comfortable for him, if that’s alright.”</p><p>Reginald nodded. “Very well.”</p><p>Their words didn’t register until Vanya watched her mom carefully press the needle into the crook of Ben’s elbow. “No,” she whispered in shock, the reality of what they were doing dawning on her. “No, Mom, you <em>can’t</em>, please, he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s-” she cut herself off with her own sobs, leaning down and pressing her heaving chest to Ben’s so she could listen for breathing as she pressed the plunger down. </p><p>“Number Seven,” her father finally addressed her. Grace removed the needle. “Pull yourself together and tell me everything you witnessed.”</p><p>She ignored him, a scream building as she watched her brother’s eyes flutter. His muscles relaxed, and he didn’t take another breath. “No,” she whispered again. Her tears splashed onto his face and mixed with splattered blood. </p><p>Her father took a step forward, but as he did, they heard the thundering of footsteps from the second floor. Luther, Diego and Allison must finally be on their way. She opened her mouth to call for them, but Reginald beat her to it. </p><p>“Keep Number Seven quiet,” he ordered Grace, turning to walk briskly up the stairs. He didn’t bother looking at Ben. </p><p>Before she could do anything, her mother obeyed, abandoning the shell of what had been her son to pull her daughter into her lap. It might have been a comforting gesture if she didn’t clamp her cool, bloody hand against Vanya’s lips. Her mouth opened and she tried to scream, but no noise came out. She realized with horror she was tasting her brother’s blood. Vanya had never been as strongly reminded that Grace was an android then as she gagged and struggled against her unyielding embrace. </p><p>“I know, dear,” she soothed quietly in her ear. She rocked them back and forth in the way Vanya had liked as a child. “I know.”</p><p>It was dark, but Vanya’s eyes had adjusted well enough to see Ben’s body laying in front of her. She stared at him, willing this all to be a dream, for someone to tell her it wasn’t what it looked like. His dead eyes stared back. </p><p>“Father,” she heard from the first story landing. Luther’s voice. “We heard gunshots. The power’s gone, and Four, Six, and Seven aren’t in their rooms. What’s-”</p><p>“Number Four is resting elsewhere. Number Six dealt with the intruders. Number Seven alerted him to them,” he announced in his usual haughty voice. Vanya knew suddenly that he wouldn’t bother telling them. “Take the back exit to the alleyway and search the area. We don’t know that they weren’t alone.”</p><p>“Is everyone okay?” asked Diego. She held her breath. </p><p>“The others will stay here in case of another attack,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard. “Quickly now.”</p><p>“How do you know what happened?”</p><p>“I watched the situation unfold from the security cameras until it was time to intervene. I have given you all the information at my disposal,” he said. <em>Liar</em>, thought Vanya. “Number Four will gather more. Now go. I will join you in a moment to keep in contact.” </p><p>His voice offered no room for disagreement. She listened as her siblings shuffled down the back stairs, and her heart broke with the realization that she would have to deal with this alone. Her mother pressed a kiss to the crown of her head.</p><p>When the back door slammed shut, Reginald began walking towards them. She closed her eyes. </p><p>“Oh, Miss Vanya,” came a familiar voice. Grace’s hand fell away from her mouth.</p><p>“Pogo,” she cried, twisting around to face him. “Ben, he-”</p><p>A small hand landed on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”</p><p>Her father walked past the scene in front of him and crossed the room to the infirmary. Vanya remembered with a jolt that Klaus had been there the whole time. As soon as Reginald withdrew the key and pulled open the door, all six feet of her big brother spilled out and onto the floor. </p><p>“What’s happening?” he breathed at Reginald, scrambling to his feet. Their father looked on with barely contained disgust as he repeated <em>’what’s happening, what’s happening’</em> under his breath like a mantra. </p><p>“<em>Klaus</em>,” she managed with a broken voice, sagging against Grace’s arms. His wild gaze landed on her and he took a few stumbling steps forwards, eyes wide to try and see in the dark. </p><p>“That you, Van?” he asked shakily. “What-” his voice trailed off as a car drove by outside, flooding the room with light, and Vanya knew he had figured it out by the look on his face. “<em>Ben!</em>” he shouted, making to run towards them, but their father caught him by the arm before he could get very far. </p><p>“Number Six is dead,” he said. He ignored the sounds of anguish his children made at the announcement and turned to address Grace. “Take the body to the West Laboratory. Number Seven, clean yourself up and follow us. Pogo, turn on the backup generator. Then bring me reinforcements for the door.” With that, he grabbed Klaus’ other arm and began to walk them towards the laboratory himself. Grace pulled her to her feet and gave her a gentle nudge to get moving, then leaned down and carefully scooped Ben into her arms. Blood smeared against the cheery yellow dress she was wearing, but she didn’t seem to notice. She cradled him to her chest as she walked away and pressed her cheek into his hair, supporting his head like an infant’s and humming a lullaby just for him. </p><p><em>That might be the closest she can get to grieving,</em> Vanya thought to herself numbly as she followed after her family. She felt sluggish and disconnected. <em>Probably the shock setting in,</em> her brain provided helpfully. She kept walking. </p><p>Ben’s blood left a trail the whole way there. </p><p>Ahead of her, Klaus was doing his best to break free. He screamed and begged and pulled out every trick to evade capture in the book, but his movements were slowed by drugs and grief, and Reginald held fast. He struggled until the bitter end, when Grace swung open the door and brought Ben inside. The smell of formaldehyde flooded the hallway. </p><p>“No,” Klaus pleaded, his eyes welling up in terror. “I can’t do this, I can’t summon him, Dad, <em>please,</em>” his efforts fell on deaf ears. The lights flickered on, and Vanya blinked down at her hands. They were covered in blood, she noticed. </p><p>“I need to know who attacked the Academy, and why,” Reginald told him. “Number Seven is useless to me. You will not leave this room until I have my answers, one way or another. If you know what’s good for you, you will summon Number Six and ask him.” Klaus broke into incoherent sobs at that as Grace walked serenely out of the room, her arms and dress still streaked with gore. She reached for Klaus, as if to comfort him, but stopped when he flinched away. </p><p>“I’ll go clean up the mess,” she said brightly to no one in particular. “Look after each other, my darlings.” Before she left, Grace pressed a kiss to Vanya’s forehead and smoothed a hand over her hair. Vanya couldn’t bring herself to care about the feeling of blood seeping through to her scalp. </p><p>Their father shoved Klaus hard into the open doorway, and he cried out as he went flying. Vanya watched in mute terror as he lunged for the door and almost got his fingers smashed. Reginald was too quick for him, swiftly closing and locking the door. He turned to face her, seemingly impervious to the wailing behind him. </p><p>“Sit down,” he ordered. Vanya scrambled to sit on a nearby bench without thought. <em>Well-trained,</em> she thought out of nowhere. She wanted to throw up. </p><p>Her father checked his watch and then pointed at the phone hanging on the hallway wall. “You are to sit here and listen. I’ll call from a payphone for an update every fifteen minutes.” It was then that Pogo made his way around the corner, carrying what looked almost like a large cross with a box in the middle and a toolbox. He handed it to Reginald, who fit the box over the handle and deadbolt and held the contraption still while Pogo drilled and hammered the wood into the wall and the door on either side. Klaus’ efforts renewed when he realized what was happening, slamming his shoulder into the door and begging even louder. </p><p>When he was satisfied, Reginald straightened up and turned to Pogo. “I’m going to go find Numbers One through Three. Keep watch on the security cameras.” He looked at her again. “I’ll be in touch.” </p><p>He left without so much as a glance backwards. </p><p>Pogo clasped her face with his hands. “Miss Vanya,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I truly am sorry.” He looked meaningfully at the ground, and she followed his gaze to the toolbox. “Do you think anyone else will come to the house?”</p><p>“No,” she croaked. “They said they had no backup. We overheard them.”</p><p>His hands fell and he nodded. “Then I would say you have about three hours until your father is satisfied.” He looked sadly back at the door holding a distraught Klaus and took a deep breath before walking in the direction of the security room. “I suspect the intruders must have damaged most of the security cameras.”</p><p>He left the toolbox and the drill behind. </p><p>As soon as he was gone, Vanya stood up. A wave of dizziness and nausea hit her at the sudden movement, and she grasped at the wall to steady herself. She licked her lips absentmindedly before remembering too late her face was smeared in Ben’s blood. The taste and the memory made her stomach roll, and she barely made it to a trashcan before vomiting what little she’d had for dinner into it. She kept retching even after it was all gone, like her body was trying to expel everything that had happened that night. </p><p>When it finally subsided some ten minutes later, Vanya wiped her mouth and her nose and stumbled towards the door. Klaus had stopped his pleading, and she could hear the telltale sound of a lighter flicking behind the door. She almost smiled at the absurdity of it. Leave it to Klaus to smuggle weed everywhere he went. </p><p>*  “Klaus,” she called through the door. Her voice sounded as bad as she felt, but Klaus heard her anyway.</p><p>“Vanya? You still there?” he asked hopefully. “Don’t suppose you can unlock the door for me?”</p><p>She inspected the contraption. She didn’t think she could. The box over the handle and deadbolt had been nailed down, likely for that exact purpose. “There’s like a… box. It’s nailed over the handle. I can’t reach it.”</p><p>“Of course,” Klaus laughed dryly. The sound made her wince. “What about the rest of it? If I pick this lock, will the door open?”</p><p>“No,” she responded. “I’ll have to unscrew the wooden slats blocking it first.”</p><p>There was a pause where both of them seemed privately surprised she had said that. </p><p>“You’ll do that?” he asked uncertainly.</p><p>“Yes,” she replied without hesitation. She’d already picked up the drill. She wasn’t going to let another brother down tonight. </p><p>“Thanks,” he said softly. Vanya suspected the weed she could smell might be kicking in, because he made no effort to start picking the lock. </p><p>It took longer then she would have liked to figure out the drill and get the wood down. She stripped more than a few nails in the process and had to painstakingly unscrew them by hand. But she didn’t stop. </p><p>Her father called twice while she worked. Both times, she had to swallow down her fear and tell him nothing had changed. Vanya knew this might be the single most punishable offense she’d ever committed and the thought of what her father would do almost made her want to drop the drill and run. It was the image of her packed bags that kept her steady while she used a screwdriver to chisel away at the joint between the box and the slat. </p><p><em>I can leave</em> she reminded herself as she checked to make sure she hadn’t missed the next call during her last bout of drilling. <em>I’m ready. This is my reason. I’ll leave.</em></p><p>She pried the last piece of wood reinforcement from its place after she returned and started to let Klaus know, but a noise from inside gave her pause. It was further away then the other noises had been, like he had moved deeper into the room. It sounded like… laughter. Her heart clenched. It sounded like Ben’s laughter. But that couldn’t be right, Klaus was high. Could he summon him like this? Was she fooling herself?</p><p>She shook off the grief that threatened to overtake her and knocked. “Klaus?” she called again. “Dad’s going to call again. Soon. I’m- I’m sorry, I-” she took a deep breath. She didn’t want to get her hopes up. “What… what do I tell him?”</p><p>There was a pause before he answered. “I’m almost done busting out of here, Van,” he said, sounding a little breathless. “When he calls, tell him nothing’s changed. I’ll be out in a second. Did you get your side taken care of?” </p><p>“I did,” she confirmed. “It was like you said, I couldn’t get to the handle to unlock it, but you should be able to get it to swing open now.” </p><p>“Thanks, sis,” Klaus responded. Vanya tried very hard not to think about Ben’s ghost seeing his own dead body. “Be a dear and stick around? I need to… tell you something,” he added. </p><p>“Yeah, I can- yeah. I will,” Vanya wasn’t sure if she wanted to be right or not. She didn’t think so. “Okay.”</p><p>“Okay,” Klaus agreed. She could hear scratching and clicking from the doorknob. The phone rang. </p><p>“One sec,” she called to him, running to pick up the phone. </p><p>“Any updates?” her father asked immediately. Her stomach clenched.</p><p>“No changes,” she reported, hoping he couldn’t tell she was lying. </p><p>“I’ll call again in fifteen minutes,” he said. He hung up, and that was that. </p><p>She turned around to see Klaus’ head poking out of the open door, scanning the hallway. When he saw her, he gestured frantically for her to come closer. She did so hesitantly, and when she was close enough, Klaus reached out and grabbed her wrist. </p><p>“Okay, um, don’t freak out,” he said, and that was all the warning she got before he flung the door open and tugged her inside. </p><p>Vanya looked up at the living, breathing face of her dead brother and thought, <em>okay, maybe just one change.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>summary of skippable portion: vanya runs to check on ben with reginald and grace close behind. she finds the bodies of the intruders and ben laying in the entrance hall. she screams, and the lights go out. ben is still alive, but in incredible pain. grace determines there is nothing that can be done to save him, and she administers morphine to make his last moments more comfortable. reginald goes to find luther, allison, and diego to tell them to leave out the back exit and search the area for more threats. he does not tell them about ben. he releases klaus from the infirmary, tells him ben is dead, and then drags him to the west laboratory. grace follows with ben, and vanya follows as well. pogo fixes the lights and brings reginald reinforcements for the door so klaus can't just break out. reginald tells vanya to wait there until klaus can provide more information about the shooters, and says he will call every fifteen minutes. he leaves to find the others. vanya tells pogo the intruders didn't have backup, and he leaves the drill behind and implies to her that he will destroy the security footage when he goes. </p><p>content warnings: canonical child abuse, home invasion, major character death, grief, shock, blood, vomit. let me know if i forgot anything.</p><p>OKAY. this was a fucking monster of a chapter, sorry im a day late. i accidentally wrote 2k words of vanya character study before i got to the plot stuff. just wanted to set up how the family dynamic is in this story.</p><p>you might be saying, wow, none of this shit happens in canon! and you'd be right! ben is supposed to have died a few months ago in canon, good on u for noticing. so what's happening?? why is the commission here??? well... perhaps there is something else at play here. </p><p>anyway! find me on tumblr @fivenb. i post writing updates, season 3 theories, and very funny posts. also, quick note, finally figured out how ao3 works, so i went back and edited the previous chapters a bit. go check out the changes!</p><p>ALSO no one has guessed my zodiac sign yet.. the prize is up for grabs.... </p><p>leave a comment if u enjoyed! see u next week (or sooner)!</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. heaven help us</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p><em>"i'll give you all the nails you need, cover me in gasoline.<br/>wipe away those tears of blood again,<br/>the punchline to the joke is asking:<br/>someone save us"</em><br/> </p><p>The Gospel of Matthew; resurrection and rebirth. The Hargreeves make a run for it.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sorry this is so late and so ridiculously long. ive barely proofread the last few thousand words so if it doesn't make sense simply pretend that it does, thank you. </p><p>i want to talk a little bit about characterization! i know a lot of people see vanya and ben, especially young vanya and ben, as meek and quiet 24/7, but to be honest i don't think that's accurate. i think they both have some bite to them, and they clearly open up and are more comfortable in small situations and do worse in group settings. they grew up in an abusive household and their characters reflect that even as kids; ben may be kind and vanya may be self conscious, but they're also both very angry, and i think it's important to address that too. it's also more fun to write and read about a couple of assholes then two doormats being dragged through life by their chaotic brother, you know?</p><p>anyway, enjoy three hargreeves in various states of shock attempt to communicate. it's kind of another heavy one, but they do say * l*ve y*u so it's worth it.</p><p>cw in end notes!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ben didn’t cry when his sister stumbled through the door and caught sight of him, but it was a near thing.</p><p>Vanya had practically flown to him the second she realized he was there, buried her entire face somewhere in the vicinity of his sternum, and had yet to resurface. He’d been worried about her since she’d burst into his room earlier, and seeing she was okay was a relief beyond words. Ben kept his arms wrapped numbly around her as she cried into his shirt. He tried his best to ignore the smell of his blood in her hair. His own head had somehow been soaked in blood too, somehow. Rivulets of it had dripped from his hairline, leaving itchy streaks on his forehead that didn’t quite reach his eyes. </p><p>“What the fuck,” Vanya sobbed, eloquently summing up what everyone was feeling.</p><p>Ben giggled a little despite himself, and it was only slightly a hysterical cry for help, which he decided meant he was successfully keeping his brain from actually turning to goo. For the time being. The jury was still out on how long that would last. </p><p>Vanya made a noise that sounded like a muffled scream, and his heart broke with helplessness. He clutched her tighter and started to feel a lot less confident about that goo thing. </p><p>Attempting to stave off another full fledged breakdown, Ben tried looking up to focus on his brother instead, who sent him a shaky smile when he noticed he was being watched. Klaus stumbled over and wrapped his arms around them both, effectively sandwiching their sister between them. They stayed like that until Vanya’s tears and shuddering breaths died down and she started to shift within her spot. Klaus backed away to let them seperate. He kept one arm on her shoulder, though whether it was to comfort her or himself he wasn’t sure. She leaned into him as if she couldn’t stay upright on her own and reached towards Ben’s neck. </p><p>They all waited as she searched for his pulse. Her fingers felt too warm on his throat, and despite the fact he knew she would, the relief he felt when she found it was immeasurable. From the look on her face, she felt the same way. </p><p>“What <em>happened?</em>” she choked out. Ben could only look at her helplessly, but she continued. “Your- your <em>chest,</em> Ben, it was-” she cut herself off with another bout of hyperventilating, and Klaus seemed to have to resist the urge to move as far away from strong emotions as possible. He rubbed awkwardly at her arm instead. “How did you survive that?”</p><p>“I didn’t,” Ben answered honestly. “I didn’t survive it, I mean. I died.”</p><p>There was a pause as everyone took that in. To their credit, no one ran away screaming.</p><p>“Oh,” Vanya said quietly. She wiped at her face and tried in vain to compose herself. Dried blood flaked away and floated to the ground, and nausea ate at his stomach when he noticed the stain over her mouth almost looked like a handprint. “Is this a power thing? Klaus, are you doing something?”</p><p>Klaus blinked at her and seemed to consider the possibility he had developed the power of reincarnation without noticing. “No?” he guessed.</p><p>“I don’t think it’s Klaus,” Ben said. “I think it was - well, this sounds crazy, but…” he trailed off and felt a bit like a deer in headlights who’d already been hit by several cars. </p><p>“You just came back to life,” Klaus reminded him helpfully. “It would be weirder if the explanation wasn’t crazy.”</p><p>“But you are really here, right?” Vanya cut in, looking worried all of a sudden. “As in, you, Ben Hargreeves, are here? You’re not like, a ghost, or a reanimated corpse or something?”</p><p>They both looked at her.</p><p>“That’s fucking bleak, thanks for that,” Klaus said. Then he tilted his head thoughtfully. “Wait. Does anyone know the definition of reanimated corpse? ‘Cause I mean, he might technically be a reanimated corpse.”</p><p>“There’s not a definition of reanimated corpse, because reanimated corpses are not real,” Ben replied automatically, barely registering the implications of what they were saying. </p><p>Klaus gestured to the blood staining Ben’s… everything. “Do you really want to try and make that case right now? Again, you just came back from the dead.”</p><p>Before Ben could respond, Vanya cut him off with a sharp breath that nearly set off another round of hyperventilating as that fact sinked in for her all over again. Klaus shot him a panicked look and tightened his hold around her, returning to nervously patting her shoulder in an attempt at comfort. “Hey uh… what’s wrong?” he asked, then winced.  </p><p>The sheer idiocy of the question actually seemed to break her out of the panicked spiral, if only from confusion. She turned to stare at him incredulously. Ben did the same. Klaus looked like he would have too, if that were possible. “What’s <em>wrong?</em>”</p><p>“Yes?” he tried.</p><p>“You’re sticking with that? What’s wrong? I’m standing here in front of the reanimated corpse of my brother and you’re asking me what’s wrong?”</p><p>“Unfortunately.”</p><p>“Guys,” Ben interrupted. “I’m not a reanimated corpse.” Then he thought about it for a second. “Well, okay, I guess I might be, technically. But I’m not a <em>zombie</em>. And Klaus did not reanimate me.”</p><p>“So what <em>did</em> happen?” Vanya asked, as if there could possibly be an easy answer.</p><p>He looked her right in the eye.</p><p>“I think I met God.”</p><p>“Oh, sure,” Vanya said weakly. She sat down with her legs crossed right where she had been standing and placed her head in her hands, rocking back and forth slightly in a self soothing motion. “Um. Could you say that again, please?”</p><p>Ben tried to smile apologetically as he crouched to join her, but it probably came across as more of a grimace. He hesitated for a moment before taking her hands gently into his own. Klaus followed them down in a movement that was not unsimilar to collapsing, and they sat together in an odd triangle. Both of his siblings looked at him expectantly as he struggled to figure out what to say. </p><p>“Look, it’s fuzzy,” he admitted. “And my brain is having trouble… working, right now, and I feel like I’ve been dragged behind a truck. But when I- when I <em>died</em>, I saw something.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t- I don’t think I remember all of what happened, though.”</p><p>“What do you remember?” asked Vanya. Ben twisted his mouth.</p><p>“I woke up, and the world was, I don’t know, colorless? Black and white,” he finally said. “I was outside, somewhere, but I didn’t recognize it, and there was…” he trailed off in thought. He really did want to explain this to them, but he had no idea how. </p><p>“A girl?” Klaus suggested. When both he and Vanya looked at him oddly, he squirmed slightly. “That’s what you said earlier, I mean. There was a girl. You said.”</p><p>Ben narrowed his eyes at his brother, who avoided his gaze. This was the second time Klaus had brought up the girl almost completely unprompted. It was honestly a weird thing to fixate on,  relatively speaking. He wondered why he kept mentioning it, but trying to confront a shifty Klaus was generally somewhat of a fool’s errand, so he let it go for the time being.</p><p>“Yeah,” Ben said slowly, turning to focus on Vanya instead. “A young girl, maybe twelve. She seemed, I don’t know,” <em>like an asshole</em>, “upset with me, for some reason. She kept glaring at me.”</p><p>“And, wait, you think that was God?” Vanya asked.</p><p>“Well, no,” he revised truthfully. “I’m pretty sure there is no God.”</p><p>His siblings said nothing in the wake of that declaration, so he decided to elaborate. “I mean, not a God like we imagine. Like, she’s definitely what we perceive as God, but I think she’s mostly just in charge of what happens to us after we die. She doesn’t control our lives, she deals with our souls. Like a gatekeeper. I think.” </p><p>It was hard to explain. Even without the confusion he was still dealing with, he wasn’t sure he could fully describe the bone-deep certainty he felt. Somehow, he knew the closest thing this world had to a God was a tweenaged grim reaper with an attitude problem, even if he wasn’t sure what her deal was. </p><p>He <em>really</em> wished he could remember everything. </p><p>“Is this… what? Fucking... God is dead?” Klaus asked, and it should have sounded like a joke, but it didn’t.</p><p>“Not dead,” he answered. “Just kind of a bitch, I think.”</p><p>Again, there was no response. “And nothing like the Abrahamic religions would believe,” he added, as if that were in any way helpful.</p><p>“Maybe we should back up a bit,” Vanya suggested. </p><p>“Yeah, you lost me,” admitted Klaus. </p><p>Ben took another deep breath. He tried to think through the night’s events and put them together into something understandable. </p><p>“The Horror tore through me when I tried to close the portal. It killed me,” he started, only refraining from wrapping his arms around his stomach because his hands were still in Vanya’s. “I definitely died. I know that much.”</p><p>He didn’t tell them he couldn’t remember it. Anything beyond the moment he’d first thought to himself ‘it’s not going to go away’ was lost to him. He couldn’t begin to imagine the feeling of bleeding out, or the moment he closed his eyes without any hope of reopening them ever again. He tasted blood on his teeth, and he didn’t know why. </p><p>But he did know that after a lifetime of grappling with it nearly every waking moment, the monster had finally killed him. He supposed that fact should have been scarier, or more upsetting, but it seemed his desensitization to the Horror’s violence extended to himself. Just another victim ripped apart by the thing inside him.</p><p>“Then,” he continued, trying to push away thoughts of the Horror lest he accidentally summon it forth from wherever it was hiding, “I woke up, like I said, outside. There wasn’t any color, anywhere. The girl -”</p><p>“God,” interrupted Klaus.</p><p>“<em>The girl</em> found me, and we… talked.”</p><p>They waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, Vanya asked, “Talked about what?”</p><p>“That’s the part I don’t remember,” he admitted with an unpleased twist of his lips.  “But it was important. I know she explained something to me. And I know she was, like, really pissed at me, or at something to do with me, and I really wish I could remember why.” </p><p>He withdrew his hands to skirt over his hair in frustration. Blood had matted a tangle of thorns into the hair near the crown of his head, and he realized with a sick feeling that it must have come from laying in a pool of his own blood.</p><p>“Then what?” Klaus prompted. </p><p>“Then she shoved me, and when I hit the ground, I was on the table.” He jerked his thumb behind him for emphasis. “And then I smelled weed,” he finished nonsensically. </p><p>Everyone took a moment to think through all of that, and Ben could almost see the moment it all added up to far too much supernatural bullshit for Vanya. “That’s, that’s <em>impossible</em>, Ben,” she protested. “I- I don’t understand.”</p><p>“Me either,” he commiserated. </p><p>She continued as though she hadn’t heard him. “I just -” she dragged her hands over her face, “- what if it was a dream? Did you recognize the girl? Was she someone you’ve met on a mission before?”</p><p>“She was unlike anyone I’ve ever seen,” Ben told her truthfully. She’d radiated power the way an explosion trapped in thimble might. He half expected Klaus to butt in with another stupid joke at his expense, but he was staying quiet. His knees were folded up to his chest, and he was chewing on his nails thoughtfully. </p><p>“Okay, that’s pretty typical, a lot of times we don’t recognize faces in our dreams, but we had to have seen them somewhere,” she said, her voice tinged with desperation. </p><p>His sister was very good at rationalizing. It was as much a coping mechanism for her as playing the violin was, or making herself small and quiet. Everything had a cause and effect because problems with causes had solutions. He wondered if it came from being the only one in the house without a direct connection to the impossible, or if maybe she’d learned it from Five. </p><p>“Vanya,” he said gently. She stared at the ground between them with wet eyes. “I know it’s impossible. But it happened.” A thought occurred to him, and he reached for the hem of his shirt. “Did you see the um, the wound, before?”</p><p>An unreadable emotion flickered over her face. She nodded. </p><p>“It’s okay now,” he said, and lifted up his shirt. It sent a spark of anxiety through him to expose his stomach like that to his siblings, as if a shirt would be any barrier to the Horror, but he did it anyway. Klaus sucked in a breath at the sight, and Vanya didn’t look up. “See?” </p><p>She shook her head fearfully. The cold air of the lab gave him goosebumps, but he waited.</p><p>“It really is okay,” Klaus said. “Lookit, Van, he’s alright.”</p><p>Vanya’s eyes flickered upwards a few times before she finally committed to fully looking out from behind her bangs. Her gaze rested on his torso. </p><p>The skin there was smeared with blood and far too pale, yet it was smooth and whole. There were old battle scars littering the expanse of his body, but not a single sign of the fight that had killed him less than an hour ago. She stared disbelievingly for a long moment, then looked to his face once she was certain he wouldn’t suddenly burst open again. He let his shirt fall. </p><p>“You’re really here,” she breathed. </p><p>“I am.”</p><p>“You’re <em>alive</em>,” she said, as if it was only dawning on her now.</p><p>“And as beautiful as always,” Klaus chirped.</p><p>“<em>What the fuck,</em>” Vanya said once again. </p><p>“Yeah,” agreed Ben. “I think Klaus handled it better than you, but he’s on a lot of drugs, and that gives him an advantage.”</p><p>“Just weed,” Klaus protested. “Also, death means almost nothing to me.” Ben graciously did not mention the crying. “Also also, I’m still not entirely unconvinced this is a hallucination.” </p><p>Ben rolled his eyes and shut that down before Vanya panicked again. “You aren’t hallucinating, stop that.”</p><p>“Okay, fine,” he sniffed dramatically. “Touchy subject, jeez.”</p><p>A thought rose to his mind unbidden, and he snorted before he could stop himself. “Sorry,” he said in response to the glances he was receiving. “It’s just- Jesus. <em>Jesus</em>.”</p><p>Vanya continued to look confused, but Klaus caught on. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “Jesus.”</p><p>“Immaculately conceived. Resurrected.”</p><p>“Complicated relationship with father.”</p><p>“Jesus had daddy issues?”</p><p>“I mean, yeah. Think you can turn water to wine?”</p><p>“Honestly? With the fucking day I’ve had? I should try it.”</p><p>“You could probably walk on it too, while we’re -”</p><p>The shrill ringing of the phone cut him off, and all three of them jumped. </p><p>“Shit,” Vanya swore, scrambling to her feet to answer. She raced off, leaving Ben and Klaus to sit there and come back to reality once more. </p><p>“Dad?” Ben asked quietly as his sister’s voice floated down the hall. </p><p>“Yeah,” Klaus confirmed, smiling wryly. “He’s with the three stooges while they look for more intruders. Checking the perimeter, or whatever.” He clenched his jaw a little before composing himself enough to continue. “Locked us up in here cause Vanya was catatonic and there weren’t any other witnesses. I’m ‘gathering information,’ which as you can see,” he said loftily, waving what was left of his burned out joint, “is going just swell.”</p><p>“That was… dumb of him,” Ben pointed out, and Klaus shrugged.</p><p>“He doesn’t care about information, Benny, he needed somewhere to put you, and he hates us. Plus, he has, like, no qualms about traumatizing me. Probably thought it would help me overcome my fear.” He laughed at that, and it sounded painful, like he was telling an inside joke but all knowing parties had died. “A few birds, one stone.”</p><p>Part of him, a part that was both very old and childishly naive, wanted to protest. He wanted to reassure Klaus that their father didn’t hate them, that he had been worried about his other children and was trying to protect everyone. He wanted to believe that his father had seen his dead body and felt anything other than mildly inconvenienced. </p><p>Instead, he nodded. “We’re out now,” he reassured. But something else was gnawing at him. “The others… left?” he asked. He cringed at how it sounded, but he couldn’t help but feel hurt that they really had just left him to rot while they looked for enemies that weren’t there. They hadn’t even bothered to stay behind to protect the most vulnerable members of their family, let alone mourn him. </p><p>Klaus didn’t seem to notice. “Mm-hm,” he hummed. “They’re out there flitting through the streets in their nighties looking to avenge you.”</p><p>“He didn’t tell them, Ben,” came Vanya’s voice from the door, as if reading his mind. She must have gone and retrieved her anxiety medication while she was gone, because she was holding the bottle in a white knuckled grip. He wasn’t sure if she’d taken any, but she looked calmer just having it in her hands. She’d also wiped her face, and even though the rest of her was still stained with gore he was relieved to not have to see that bloody handprint. “By the time they came to investigate the noise, you were -” she swallowed, “- gone, and the lights were off, and he made Mom keep me from yelling for them. They wanted to check on us, but Dad made them leave.”</p><p>“Oh,” he said dumbly. He imagined his siblings coming home to be told he had been dead for hours without them knowing, and bile rises in his throat. “That’s - I think that’s worse.” </p><p>“Everything Dad does is the worst,” said Klaus cheerfully. No one disagreed.</p><p>“What, um,” Vanya started, crossing her arms self-consciously. “What are we going to do now?”</p><p>Ben considered that for a moment. He hadn’t actually thought about what would come next. He couldn’t even imagine what his father would say. “Did you tell Dad?” he asked her. She shook her head tightly.</p><p>“I panicked and I told him I thought Klaus had fallen asleep,” she admitted. “He said to either find something loud or let him choke on his own vomit, and I couldn’t tell if it was a threat or if he was genuinely offering me a choice.”</p><p>Klaus snorted without humor. “The worst,” he reiterated darkly. Vanya tilted her head in agreement. </p><p>“Yeah. But I think he’s given up, at least, because he’s not going to call again. So we have about two hours to figure out what we’re going to tell him when he gets back,” she said, crossing the threshold to come sit next to Ben after it became clear no one else felt up to moving just yet. She leaned her head into his shoulder hesitantly, and he shifted to try and make it more comfortable for her. </p><p>“I’m really not looking forward to that conversation,” he said tiredly, and Vanya gave a small, sardonic laugh. </p><p>“Yeah, probably won’t be -”</p><p>“Oh my god,” Klaus interrupted. Vanya shrank away a little at being cut off, and Ben frowned at him, but he didn’t even notice. His entire body was suddenly tense as he tugged anxiously at his own hair.</p><p>“Klaus?” he called, concerned. His brother’s eyes shot up to look at him. He looked terrified.</p><p>“Under no circumstances can we tell Dad,” he said seriously. The look on his face made Ben’s stomach churn with dread. </p><p>“Why not?” he asked cautiously. Klaus twitched but didn’t answer, running his hands up and down his arms as if he was shivering. He was still wearing the green tank top and low rise jeans he had slipped on to go out, and it struck Ben just how out of place he looked in this cold and uncaring morgue.</p><p>How young they all must look, sat close together in the room their father had designated to be his son’s tomb, heavy with the smell of blood, pot, and formaldehyde. </p><p>“Klaus?” Vanya asked. He closed his eyes, and began to speak.</p><p>“Stop me if this is a drug fuelled fantasy, I’d really like that to be the case,” he said, drawing his legs up tighter beneath him. “But what do you think Dad will do with the information that his child-soldiers-slash-science-experiments can’t die? Cause I can bet it wouldn’t be good.” He cracked an eye open to look at their faces. “Anyone gonna stop me?”</p><p>Vanya shook her head immediately, as if on instinct. “No,” she blurted. “Dad- he <em>wouldn’t-</em>”</p><p>“He would,” Ben said with dawning horror. “He really would.” </p><p>Soldiers without limits. Missions without danger. Experiments without end. He’d never let them out of his sight again. </p><p>“But, guys,” she protested, “you don’t know that it would happen again, or that all of you would come back to life. This could have been a fluke, or-”</p><p>“So what? You think he wouldn’t kill me to see what happened?” he snapped at her. “You think he wouldn’t kill <em>you</em>? You wanna risk that?” She flinched away from him as if he’d struck her, and didn’t argue again.</p><p>“Stop. We won’t,” Ben tried, “we’ll figure this out. We probably need to leave, but -”</p><p>“Yeah, have fun with whatever,” Klaus interrupted, moving to stand. “I, personally, will be cutting my losses immediately, because there’s no way in hell I’m sitting around waiting to let daddy dearest lock me up and do even more fucked up, unethical experiments on me, goodbye!” </p><p>“You’re not leaving by yourself,” Ben blurted, grabbing his wrist in a flash of panic. Klaus rolled his eyes.</p><p>“Wanna bet?” he smiled like a shark and yanked his hand out of Ben’s with a practiced ease, hopping to his feet languidly. </p><p>“Guys,” Vanya admonished weakly. Klaus ignored her and steamrolled ahead. </p><p>“I’m getting out of here, and if you’re smart, you’ll do the same.”</p><p>“And then what?” Ben challenged. “Pogo knows your haunts. It would be one thing if we were eighteen, but we’re not. Dad would drag your ass back here in a heartbeat if he had reason to. What’s your plan?”</p><p>“I’ll figure something out,” he said with the confidence of someone in a much better situation. </p><p>“You don’t have a plan,” Ben realized. “Seriously? You’re going to try and just - <em>leave</em>, by yourself, while you’re panicking and high out of your mind?”</p><p>“Aww,” Klaus cooed mockingly to deflect from his shaking hands. “Don’t tell me you’re worried, Benny.”</p><p>“Of course I’m fucking worried, asshole!” he snapped, glaring at his brother. “I’m worried we’re not going to figure this out. I’m worried Dad’s going to get back and find us. I’m worried the next time I tell him I can’t let it out or it’ll kill me, he won’t care, and I’ll have to kill myself over and over to avoid something worse. So yeah, I would really fucking appreciate it if I didn’t have to worry about you dying in a gutter somewhere.”</p><p>His chest heaving with anger, he grabbed onto a countertop and pulled himself to his feet, ready to fight more if he needed to. Instead, the head rush from earlier came back with a vengeance, and he stumbled forward. Klaus reached out to steady him before he could fall as if he’d been expecting it, and Vanya rushed to help. Together they eased him onto a nearby stool, where he put his head between his knees and tried to breathe through it. Klaus rubbed at his back.</p><p>“You alright?” he asked when Ben had calmed down somewhat. At his nod of assent, Vanya piped up.</p><p>“What was that? Are you feeling okay?”</p><p>“I think it’s the blood loss,” he said. Vanya stiffened beside him. “Or a panic attack. Or both.”</p><p>“Long as you’re not dying again,” Klaus joked weakly. </p><p>“Not quite,” Ben said, closing his eyes against the harsh lighting. </p><p>“Well, great, as long as we’re living up to the lowest possible standard, then.”</p><p>Paying no attention to their antics, Vanya fretted at him.“Do you want me to get Mom?” She started to inspect him the way they’d all been taught, checking his heart rate and tilting his head back to examine his eyes for a concussion. He let her, even though it gave him a headache. She frowned. “Your pupils are really wide.” </p><p>Klaus joined her and whistled lowly. “Yeah, they’re blown to hell. Did you hit your head?”</p><p>“I don’t think so, unless it happened after I was too gone to notice.” He didn’t quite remember dying, or most of the pain that must have come before it. He wasn’t eager to regain those memories like he was the others. </p><p>“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” Vanya asked him, though she was already combing through his hair to check for injuries. “Any other symptoms?” </p><p>“Um…” he tried to think. “No pain, anywhere, but I definitely feel weird.” </p><p>“Weird how?” she demanded as she pressed her fingers into his spine. That one was overkill, he thought, as it seemed very clear he wasn’t paralyzed. Vanya furrowed her brow in thought, and he swore he could see the gears turning in her head as she ruled out every possibility she could think of. <em>Not a head wound, not a stroke, not a dangerous loss of blood.</em> She bit at her lip. “When was the last time you ate? I’ll go get Mom.”</p><p>“No, don’t get Mom,” he told her. “I mostly feel… woozy. Kind of tired. I’m having trouble holding onto my thoughts. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s weird. I feel like I keep floating away from reality. I’ve never felt anything like this.” </p><p>Klaus’ head snapped up. “I have.” Ben stared at his brother blankly, wondering when exactly he’d died and come back to life and therefore could understand what he was feeling. “Oh my god, are you high?” he asked with a scandalized tone as his mouth widened into a smile. </p><p>“What?” Ben asked, bewildered. “No.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Vanya. “I um, I think he’s right.”</p><p>He swiveled his head to look at her. “<em>Huh?</em>”</p><p>She flapped her hand nervously by her side. “When we found you,” she explained, “Mom knew she couldn’t help. But you- you were in so much pain,” she shuddered at the memory, “she gave you a shot of pain medicine to try and… make it better, for you.”</p><p>“Oh,” Ben replied carefully. That certainly explained a lot. “What medicine?”</p><p>“I’m not sure, it was dark.”</p><p>“Where’d she inject it?” Klaus asked, looking thoughtful. Vanya was clearly confused by the question, but she told him it had been in the elbow anyway. Klaus wrinkled his nose. “Without a tourniquet?”</p><p>“Mom never uses a tourniquet on me,” Ben chimed in. “I’ve got a vein she can find easily.”</p><p>“Right,” Klaus hummed. “It’s still kind of weird, though. Did the drug kick in right away?”</p><p>He glanced at Vanya for help, but she was just as lost as him. “I think so,” she responded. “Why is that weird?”</p><p>“She must have used morphine,” he explained, “because of how fast it hit. But I could have sworn she stopped stocking liquid morphine after the last time I stole it, cause pills are easier to keep track of, apparently.”</p><p>“You stole morphine?” Vanya asked.</p><p>Klaus did not dignify that with a response, which was almost fair, considering how entirely unsurprising the revelation was. “<em>And</em> she didn’t inject it like a doctor,” he continued. “She always uses the veins in our hands when we’re on the field. She shot you up like an addict.” </p><p>That was weird, but Ben still wasn’t following. “So?”</p><p>He shrugged dismissively. “So, nothing, I guess, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not important, it’s just. You know. Weird. Downright spooky.” Klaus’ left hand fluttered nervously over his own elbow.</p><p>“Sure,” he relented, wanting to move on. “Okay, so that’s why I feel insane. Now what?”</p><p>“Before we do anything else, I think we should get Mom to look you over,” Vanya suggested, but Ben shook his head.</p><p>“Mom’ll tell Dad anything she saw,” he pointed out. “If we don’t know what we’re doing about Dad, we can’t tell Mom. And really, I feel fine.”</p><p>She looked like she wanted to disagree, but yielded the point. “Pogo?” she tried.</p><p>“Maybe as a last resort,” he said unwillingly. Pogo had more autonomy than Grace, and could at least in theory be persuaded not to tell Reginald, but he was still loyal to his father. And unlike them, he couldn’t run away. Vanya nodded at him anyway, comforted by the fact that if things took a turn for the worse there was someone he would let help. </p><p>“At the risk of making you huff and puff and blow yourself down again,” Klaus drawled, “full disclosure, I still very much want to grab something expensive and run.”</p><p>“Thank you for your honesty,” he replied dryly. “You’re not doing that.” Klaus hissed at him.</p><p>“It’s safer if we stick together,” Vanya told Klaus softly, her hand squeezing Ben’s wrist where she had been counting heartbeats before. “If- if something happens, I won’t be able to deal with it myself. Ben needs to recover somewhere away from here, and I have no idea where to go. All my plans revolved around turning eighteen and being a legal adult.” </p><p>“Mine too,” Ben concurred, the truth of that statement finally hitting him. “I don’t start college until the winter semester, and I have nowhere else to go.”</p><p>“My plan was basically just to turn eighteen and get a shitty apartment,” Vanya admitted, “but that’s going to be impossible now.”</p><p>“Please just stay,” he asked, looking Klaus in the eye. “We really need your help.”</p><p>The idea of staying in the mansion for much longer was clearly threatening to inspire another panic response, but Klaus’ face softened a little the longer he looked at them. Ben didn’t always love how everyone acted like he and Vanya were the youngest, (they were the <em>same age</em>, it was bullshit, though somehow Vanya was definitely his little sister), but it certainly had its uses. Klaus usually orbited between “petulant, disappointing middle child” and “annoying little brother” depending on the situation and the person, so he didn’t often stumble into a big brother role. Still, luckily for them, it seemed even he wasn’t immune to hurt ‘little’ siblings earnestly asking for his help. </p><p>Ben considered this, turned on the puppy dog eyes, and felt no guilt over the emotional warfare. It had been a really long day. Beside him, Vanya wrapped her arms around herself and shrank away slightly, looking for all the world like a tiny, scared kid. Ben doubted she was doing it on purpose, but it must have been effective, because Klaus suddenly groaned loudly at them. He even stomped his foot dramatically, and his whole body shook with the movement. </p><p>“You two would die on the streets,” he decided. “Like, immediately.” His tone seemed to imply it was a personal failure on their part to have not spent the last few years roaming the streets of the city, bouncing from party to party and spending nights in places not even he could remember. “I’m serious, you’d walk out the door and immediately get addicted to all the hard drugs they warn you about, or something.”</p><p>“That what happened to you?” Ben asked innocently, then dodged a flailing arm thrown his way. </p><p>“I mean, more or less,” he laughed. “Do as I say, and all that.” When the amusement died down, Klaus had to take a breath and steel himself. His eyes kept flickering around nervously, but his feet stayed firmly on the ground. “Okay, fine. We’ll do this the right way. But we need to hurry.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Vanya said, quiet but relieved. Klaus shrugged uncomfortably and looked at his nails as if to say he was done admitting to having emotions. Ben took pity on him and moved on.</p><p>“So,” he started, trying to push through the fog enough to focus on the task at hand. “When dad gets home, what happens?”</p><p>“We won’t be here,” blurted Klaus.</p><p>“I know,” Ben said. “I meant… he’s going to come check on the door, at least, and he’ll see that you and my body are gone. Vanya too. Then what does he do? Oh, we need to deal with the security cameras,” he realized.</p><p>“No need,” Vanya said. “Pogo’s the reason I got Klaus out at all. He left the toolbox behind and told me he suspected the intruders had damaged the security system. He’ll wipe it for us.”</p><p>“You trust that?”</p><p>She looked uncomfortable, but she nodded. “He did the same with the files, remember? I think he wants us to get out of here. But I’ll check before we leave,” she added. </p><p>“Okay, so, full run of the house for about two hours, as long as we avoid Mom and Pogo,” Ben said. “Do we know where they are?”</p><p>“Pogo’s in the security room. Mom’s cleaning up the… mess, in the entrance hall,” reported Vanya. He nodded in thanks. </p><p>“Can’t we just grab our stuff and leave?” Klaus asked. “This is the perfect opportunity, we could get a headstart. Two hours, we could be really far out.”</p><p>“You’re right, and we should aim to leave in an hour or less,” he said slowly, “but that’s not the biggest issue.”</p><p>“Dad thinks Ben is dead,” said Vanya. “Do we let him keep thinking that?”</p><p>“We have to, unless we want to tell him he came back to life,” Klaus said. “There’s really no way around that.”</p><p>“Okay, but why would you take my <em>body</em>?” Ben argued. “And we have to assume the others would notice we left eventually. What does he tell them? I don’t want them to mourn for me.”</p><p>“Them’s the breaks, kid,” his brother said, exasperated. “It’s not ideal, but that’s all we got. We’ll tell them once we’re safe.”</p><p>“Could we pretend Ben was never dead, and we staged it for some reason?” Vanya offered.</p><p>“Maybe, but I don’t think he’d believe it,” he said thoughtfully. “It just seems really unlikely to happen in the first place, because I could have left anytime. And if he does buy it, he’ll be pissed, which is just more of a reason to come find us.” </p><p>“So, we’ve ruled out telling him the truth and tricking him into thinking Ben was never dead,” Klaus said. “That leaves… my original plan of outrunning him.”</p><p>“But why would you take <em>the body</em> -”</p><p>“I don’t know! I’m a freaky guy! I do weird shit!”</p><p>“You’d be a seventeen year old runaway hauling around a dead body, that’s not just weird, it’s stupid.”</p><p>“Maybe I want to <em>Weekend at Bernie’s</em> my way into clubs.”</p><p>“I don’t even know who that is! Do you <em>want</em> him to have a reason to track your ass down?”</p><p>Klaus groaned again and rolled his head back like a kid throwing a tantrum. “Obviously not, Ben, but short of finding and killing a body double in the next hour or ripping you open, leaving your corpse and just fucking praying you don’t wake up during the embalming, I don’t know what else we’re supposed to do here. But hey, if it doesn’t work, feel free to haunt me!”</p><p>Ben huffed, because unfortunately, he had a point. This wasn’t exactly a situation where stuffing a few pillows under his blanket would suffice. Klaus dragging a corpse with him might be the only plausible explanation, but it comes with too many questions for him to be comfortable with. </p><p>“What happens to the bodies Dad and Pogo deal with?” Vanya asked, apropos of nothing. </p><p>“They usually get cremated and put in the…” Klaus started before his face lit up with realization. “<em>Oh,</em> Vanya, you’re a genius!” He hopped around excitedly. </p><p>“What?” Ben asked, confused. Disregarding him completely, Klaus kept talking.</p><p>“Is the incinerator in here? Fuck yeah! I call dibs on the incinerator!”</p><p>Bemused, he turned to look at Vanya, who smiled at him. “What do you think about burning the bodies in the entrance hall and passing the ashes off as yours?” she said simply, as if she were suggesting opening the windows for some fresh air.</p><p>“Is that… allowed?” he asked without thinking, and yeah, he heard it as soon as he said it, but he was really tired and it all felt very wrong.</p><p>“No? But trying to assassinate a seventeen year old is also not allowed, so,” said Klaus, still downright gleeful.</p><p>“I- <em>just</em> seventeen year olds, or?”</p><p>“Wh- <em>assassinate</em>?”</p><p>“Shhh, not the point, you two,” he waved them off. “Ooh, this is so exciting, I need a pen and paper! I’m going to write a five page note about how we destroyed the bodies of our brother’s killers and protected him in death from being subjected to the old, stupid hands of Reginald Hargreeves ever again. Back in a jiff!” With that, he ran away, cackling as he went. Vanya stared at his retreating back.</p><p>“Sometimes he really concerns me,” she said when he was out of earshot. Ben laughed.</p><p>“We’ll stop him before he goes too far,” he promised. “Unless it’s funnier not to.”</p><p>She laughed along with him, but fell too quiet after a moment. “I-” she stopped and hesitated, staring at her hands. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this? <em>I’m</em> really doing this. This is all… happening.”</p><p>He nodded sympathetically, eyes drooping as the adrenaline really started to wear off and his chaotic brother’s energy wasn’t around to match. “It’s insane, I know. Stuff keeps coming faster than you can process it. Feels like you’re being drowned and thrown about in a washing machine.”</p><p>“Is this what missions are like?” she asked quietly. </p><p>“Well, none of us have died on a mission yet,” he informed her. “But you know, the pants shitting levels of terror and the blood and the quickly coming up with plans on the spot with the threat of Reginald Hargreeves hanging over you? Pretty true to life. The ol’ nine to five.” He yawned and closed his eyes, briefly wishing they kept comfier chairs in this morgue. He said as much.</p><p>Vanya laughed a little, and he cracked an eye to squint at her. She covered her mouth with her hands, but it didn’t hide the glint in her eyes. “Sorry, I know this is serious, but… you’re really funny when you’re high.”</p><p>He let out his own bark of surprised laughter at that. “Guess we’re learning all sorts of things today,” he grinned. “You know,” Ben added happily, “I’m not the only one acting differently. You’ve been funnier, too. And braver.”</p><p>“And <em>you</em> just keep saying things,” she dismissed. At his answering glare, she relented. “Guess pants shitting levels of terror is a good look on me.”</p><p>“Or you were too busy being scared of the big things you couldn’t be scared of the little stuff.”</p><p>She shook her head at him in amusement. “You’re really gone, huh?”</p><p>“Oh, positively blasted,” he said conspiratorially, as if it was a secret. “Apparently, they waste the good stuff on the dying.” It wasn’t that funny, but Vanya laughed harder at it then he’d heard from her in years. It took a moment for their giggling to subside, and when it did, they sat together in comfortable silence for another moment. </p><p>“Tomorrow,” she mused softly. “I’m going to wake up somewhere other then the academy for the first time in my life.” She didn’t sound sad about it, or even scared.</p><p>“Yeah,” he agreed. He and the others had spent the occasional night at hotels over the years, but Vanya had always been sent home with Grace and Pogo, if she had come along in the first place. He looked over at her. “But, you know, we’ll be there too.”</p><p>Her eyes got a little misty, but her smile was happy when she said, “Yeah. Of course.” She opened her mouth to say more when they heard thundering footsteps coming down the hall. </p><p>“Okay!” Klaus called, skidding to a stop. “What sounds better? ‘Eat shit and die, old man’ or ‘eat shit and die, <em>motherfucker</em>.’ Time sensitive question.”</p><p>“The first one,” Ben laughed. “Classic.”</p><p>“Great feedback, thank you. I’ll save motherfucker for later.”</p><p>“Klaus, did you see Mom while you were out?” asked Vanya, the only sober person in the room.</p><p>“Hm? Oh, yeah. She’s scrubbing rags and clothes and stuff with bleach downstairs. We’re in the clear.”</p><p>“And the bodies?”</p><p>“Left creepily propped up in the entrance hall like the world’s most fucked up dolls.”</p><p>“...Okay,” she said, uncertain of how to respond. She turned to look at Ben. “Maybe you should shower? Klaus and I can deal with the bodies and clean ourselves up later.”</p><p>He looked at her closely. “Are you sure you’re okay to do that?”</p><p>“Ha! No,” she admitted. “But I don’t need to pack, Klaus doesn’t need a shower, you need both, and we need to save time.” At his continued hesitance, she gave him a small smile. “It’s fine. Be careful of Mom and Pogo.”</p><p>“Be careful of Klaus,” he responded dryly. The brother in question scoffed.</p><p>“I’ll play nice,” he promised. “Just a couple of gal pals burning bodies together. Bonding!” He pressed a kiss to each of their foreheads dramatically, startling them both. “Okay! Let’s do this. Everyone do their best not to die.” With that, he took off, hauling Vanya and a frankly ridiculous amount of paper and glitter pens along for the ride. </p><p>Smiling, Ben made his way upstairs to the bathroom he shared with Luther and Diego. Usually, he was a master at sneaking around the house. He walked on his tiptoes without so much as a whisper even when he wasn’t trying, and he didn’t need a shrink to know he was attempting to occupy less space in the world he only ever seemed to hurt. However, slow and heavy as he felt, he made a lot more noise then he usually would. It sent a thrill through him when he stepped the wrong way on a creaky floorboard and realized he wouldn’t get in any trouble for it. In that moment, knowing his father wouldn’t be able to see him ever again, he felt freer than he ever had. It took all of his self control to not run the rest of the way upstairs. </p><p>He reached his bathroom, peeled off his sweatshirt and pajama pants, and got into the shower without looking at himself. He sat down on the shower floor to reduce the chances of passing out and dying all over again, and let the hot water cascade over him until he felt lightheaded and had to turn it down. He stayed there for a long time without moving to clean himself, relishing in the feeling of water washing him of blood. When the water eventually ran clear, he picked up the soap, scrubbing every inch of himself until his skin was pink. He turned off the showerhead and tilted his head carefully under the stream of water from the faucet as if in prayer, and let the pounding water rinse the rest of the blood and sweat from his scalp before he touched it with shampoo. He moved slowly and carefully, knowing from experience how blood ended up everywhere, and that he wouldn’t be able to handle it if he caught sight of some he missed clinging to him later.</p><p>By the time he finally stepped out, the water had run cold and his fingers were wrinkled. His skin was tingly and a little raw, but he felt cleaner then he had in a long time. Ben placed his ruined clothes in one of the paper bags placed there specifically for that purpose, and thought a little giddily to himself how that might be the last time he’d ever be so completely covered in blood. He washed his hands and scrubbed under his nails until the blood was gone from there, too. There was still a metallic taste in his mouth, so he brushed his teeth until his gums bled a little more and he had to stop. After all this, he finally looked at himself in the long mirror hanging above the sinks. His skin was paler then it should be and rosy from the harsh treatment of the shower. His pupils were still wide as saucers, and his eyes were puffy from crying. </p><p>He wrapped another towel around his shivering shoulders, and smiled. </p><p>When Ben arrived at his room to dress and pack, he blinked a little in surprise. Vanya was there already, sat cross legged in front of his closet with stacks of folded clothes surrounding her. Her hair was wet and wrapped in a tight bun at the base of her skull, and she had changed out of pajamas into real clothes. She looked up at him with a bashful expression.</p><p>“Sorry,” she said. “You took a really long time in the shower. The bodies are still… um… burning, we’ll have to take them out when we leave. Klaus is running around looking for things to pawn, but we need to leave soon. You were in there nearly an hour.” She gestured around to what she had folded for him. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want to take, but I was trying to help.”</p><p>“Oh,” Ben replied, taken aback that he had lost so much time without realizing it. “No, it’s okay, thank you for the help.” He crossed over his bedroom and started to dig through his clothes while Vanya stood up to give him some privacy.</p><p>“I’ll let you pack,” she told him. “Klaus said no more than one small bag and one big one, but to fit as many clothes in it as possible so we don’t have to worry about it. Especially socks and underwear. And we’re going to steal the extra toiletries too.” Vanya sounded weirdly excited about that last part, and he laughed. </p><p>“Got it,” he said as she ducked out the door.</p><p>Packing was a much quicker affair then showering had been. Vanya had done much of the work already, and he didn’t own very much to begin with. He fit all his clothes and shoes into a duffle bag with room to spare, and decided to take some of his favorite books and items with him even though he knew he might regret the extra weight later. He figured his siblings would have more to bring, so he grabbed an empty backpack for anything else they might need to take. </p><p>He found Vanya in her room, sitting on her bed and running her hand over her violin case. She looked distraught, and Ben could guess what was going through her head. “Hey,” he called. “If you don’t have room, I fit all my stuff into one bag. Want to redistribute some stuff?” He knew it was more practical to save that space for supplies, or things to sell, but the look on Vanya’s face when he offered made it worth it.</p><p>“Thank you,” she said gratefully, knowing exactly what he was offering. “I really don’t want to leave it behind, but I got worried about carrying it around.”</p><p>“It’s no problem,” he reassured her, already opening the backpack so they could make room in her duffle bag. They set to work rearranging it, and he was pleased to find that her extra clothes only filled the backpack up halfway before they could fit the violin case in. Klaus poked his head in after he finished. </p><p>“There you are!” he said, grinning wildly. He had a small, fashionable backpack, that Ben was almost sure had been Allison’s first, hanging off one shoulder, and a duffle bag off the other. In his hand was a large, expensive looking suitcase, which he brandished proudly. “I found a whole bunch of shit to pawn! The suitcase alone will get us at least seventy five, I think, this motherfucker is <em>vintage</em>, and everything else should get us another two to three hundred if we’re lucky. You guys have everything you need?”</p><p>They gestured to their own bags, and Vanya held up a smaller duffle bag to show him. “I grabbed all the stuff from our bathroom, Klaus,” she explained, “and yours too, Ben. I also got a bunch of extras from the cabinet. And I had about a thousand dollars saved, so I grabbed that.”</p><p>Klaus stared at her. “How’d you save up so much?” Ben was similarly impressed. They had worked out a way of slowly building up money by systematically destroying small items and requesting just over what they needed to replace them from Grace, who never asked for change, but one thousand dollars was a lot of money. He’d only been able to dredge up around one hundred after paying for stuff he needed. </p><p>She blushed furiously. “I kept telling Pogo I needed money for application fees and prep books, and then I kept it,” she admitted. “But it only worked so many times before he started asking me if I’d gotten any responses. I’ve been saving it for emergencies.”</p><p>Klaus whistled. “Fucking ruthless.”</p><p>“I’m ready to go,” Ben interjected, a spike of excitement shooting through him at the words, “but I have some space in my backpack. I wanted to go down to the kitchen and get some supplies, like water, or snacks.”</p><p>Klaus hummed, bouncing on his feet a little. “Good idea, but we gotta go fast.” He took off without waiting for a response, and Vanya and Ben trudged after him. </p><p>They raided the pantry quickly, filling any empty space they had with water bottles and nonperishable foods. Ben looked away when Vanya grabbed three jars of peanut butter. Klaus, after some hemming and hawing, grabbed a half eaten loaf of bread. “We can eat this much before it gets stale,” he reasoned. It was almost scary how much his brother seemed to know about what they needed in this situation, but he supposed it made sense with the amount of times he had slipped out for days on end. </p><p>Their pockets and bags full to the brim, they made their way back towards the West Laboratory. Ben found himself hesitating at the end of the hall, but Klaus and Vanya bypassed the door with the wooden reinforcement still attached entirely and went into the next one. It was a room Ben had never really been in, and now he figured he knew why. </p><p>Inside was a large industrial space with three incinerators built into the far wall. The room was lined with shelves filled with equipment he didn’t recognize and small, generic urns and coffins. All three crematers were on, and Klaus went over to check on them. As he inspected them and consulted what looked like an instruction manual, which almost made Ben laugh, Vanya turned to explain. </p><p>“We put the big guy into two separate ones to make it go faster and to be more believable,” she said quietly, looking a little green around the edges. Ben didn’t have to ask why he was in two separate pieces to begin with. “One of them should be ready soon, that’s what we’re going to use for you, but we’re probably going to have to leave the other two, they were a little bigger. They don’t matter so much, though.”</p><p>“Still cookin’!” Klaus confirmed from the opposite side of the room. “Fake Ben is just about good, but it’s a little meaty still, so we’ll give it another minute.”</p><p>Ignoring that, Ben responded to his sister. “Do you think he’ll buy it?”</p><p>She shrugged. “We talked it over a lot, earlier, and... I still think this is our best option,” she said slowly. “I also think that if he doesn’t buy it, there’s no other explanation. He saw you die, Mom saw you die… he’s not going to realize anything else happened.”</p><p>“And if he figures out those ashes aren’t yours, well,” Klaus said, “worst case scenario is he thinks we took your body, for some reason, and ideally we’ll be out of reach by then.” Something beeped, and Klaus stared intently at a monitor on the wall before clapping his hands. “Dinner’s ready!” he called, and Vanya let out a shocked laugh and covered her mouth with her hands. </p><p>“Jesus,” she whispered. “This is insane.”</p><p>“Yeah,” agreed Klaus, bending over to check a small chamber built in under the cremator. “So, you’re supposed to let it cool for thirty minutes before you handle it, but…” he glanced at the clock. “I don’t want to do that. Maybe gloves? Like, oven mitts?” </p><p>No one could think of an objection to that, so he pulled on a pair of work gloves from one of the shelves and moved a metal container over to a different chamber on the wall. He placed it in, and hit another button.</p><p>“Did you guys know that cremators are very complicated and not anywhere near as fun as they sound?” Klaus asked them, setting a timer for three minutes.</p><p>“You mentioned,” said Vanya tiredly. </p><p>“You did call dibs,” Ben reminded him. </p><p>“You’re both terrible. Go pick out your fucking urn, Ben.”</p><p>Ben rolled his eyes and obeyed, Vanya trailing after him out of morbid curiosity. Most of the urns were very similar, like they’d been bought in bulk, but there were a few different models. It was weird, choosing a final resting place for the ashes of the person who’d tried to kill him and he was passing off as his own, and eventually he settled on a small, navy blue urn shaped like a vase and speckled with white paint. He held it out to Klaus, who grinned.</p><p>“Very fashionable,” he winked. The timer went off again, and Klaus slid out the container like it was a tray of freshly baked brownies. “Ta-da! Someone hold the urn still while I pour these human remains into it.” Neither of them volunteered, and he rolled his eyes at them. “You people are so weird about death,” he complained, doing it himself. His shaky hands meant some ended up on the table, and once he was done pouring the ashes into the vase, he wiped the excess away with all the casualness of someone sweeping dirt off a patio. He shook his hands off, and Ben grimaced.</p><p>“Please wash your hands,” he begged, prompting Klaus to roll his eyes again. He did it anyway, muttering the whole time. When he was done, they all looked blankly at the urn sitting quietly on the table as if it would suddenly give them answers. </p><p>“Okay,” Klaus said finally. He took out a piece of paper from his pocket and grabbed the urn. It seemed Vanya had managed to keep him from writing as much as he had planned. “I’m going to leave this on the table in the lab where he put you, and then we should go.” </p><p>“What about the others?” Ben asked a little weakly. They didn’t always get along very well, but he didn’t want them to have to deal with the death of their brother if he wasn’t actually dead. He could imagine Allison’s tears, Diego’s anger, and Luther’s guilt - what they’d been like when Five had disappeared, but ten times worse. Klaus and Vanya exchanged looks.</p><p>“We don’t know what to do about them,” Vanya answered gently. “Luther might tell Dad. Diego and Allison probably wouldn’t, but we still don’t know how to tell them what’s going on.”</p><p>“We have to tell them,” Ben insisted. “I don’t want to hurt them.”</p><p>“He might not even tell them you died, Ben, and… there’s a million things that could go wrong,” Klaus pointed out, but Ben shook his head without even processing it.</p><p>“What if we’re vague?” he asked. The gears were turning in his head. “We won’t tell Luther directly, we’ll tell Allison, and we won’t tell them I’m not dead.”</p><p>Vanya looked pained. “What would we say?”</p><p>“Just… a note, under their pillow, or something,” he said. “We’ll just say ‘don’t believe anything Dad tells you about us. He’s lying.’ Then once we’re safe we’ll get them another message, maybe to meet up?”</p><p>Klaus looked hesitant, but he nodded anyway. “If we can’t reach out to them again,” he warned, “you have to be okay with that. We’re keeping them safe by not letting Dad find out.” Ben knew his brother’s motivations were a little less selfless then that, but he was still right.</p><p>“Fine,” he agreed readily. “I’ll write it.”</p><p>Borrowed glitter pen in hand, he wrote two notes. </p><p>
  <em>Whatever he told you about what happened tonight, Dad is lying. Do not trust him, and do not tell anyone about this note. Numbers 4-7 safe. We will send another message soon. If we can’t, meet us at the diner we like on our eighteenth birthday. I can’t say anymore, I’m sorry.</em>
</p><p>After a moment of hesitation, he added <em>’I love you. Swan song.’</em> to the end of the note. Swan song was an old codeword they had for when they were on missions. It meant <em>’life or death, listen to me and we’ll all be okay’</em> and it had saved their lives more than once. Not even Klaus joked around about the codes.</p><p>It was vague enough that if their Dad found it, he wouldn’t know Ben was alive. But between telling them something was amiss, the code, and the ambiguous “4-7” he hoped his siblings were sharp enough to notice, it should be enough. He showed them to Klaus and Vanya for approval, and they ran off to place the notes. Ben waited for them, keeping an eye on the front entrance. </p><p>After a few minutes, they returned empty handed. “We checked the security room,” Vanya told him. “All the monitors are off and blank, and Pogo’s in his room with the door closed. We’re good.”</p><p>Ben felt a pang of regret that he couldn’t say goodbye to Grace or Pogo. He knew his mother couldn’t grieve for him, but he would miss her terribly, and he might not ever see her again. Pogo was… complicated, and he wouldn’t miss him as much, but knowing that he would go through the rest of his life thinking Ben was dead was almost as painful as the thought of doing that to his siblings. </p><p>“Do you want to say goodbye to Mom?” he offered. They looked at him a little sadly. </p><p>“We ran into her on our way back,” Vanya said. “We couldn’t tell her we were leaving, but we told her we loved her, and that you loved her.” His sister smiled at him softly. “She loves you too.”</p><p>Embarrassingly, his eyes filled up with tears once again. It was the best he was going to get, and it wasn’t enough, but he was glad to hear it one last time. Vanya grabbed his hand.</p><p>“We really need to go,” Klaus said, trying to mask his impatience with a gentle tone. “We have no idea when they’ll get back.”</p><p>With that, they steeled their nerves, grabbed their bags, and left the house they grew up in for what they hoped would be the last time. </p><p>It felt almost anticlimactic, Ben mused, as they followed Klaus through an empty alleyway. Maybe it was just the morphine still working through his system, but minus the bags thumping a rhythm against their legs as they walked, it felt like any other time they’d snuck out in the dead of night for some freedom. They didn’t say anything for a long time.</p><p>“Where are we going?” Ben said quietly after about ten minutes of walking, though it felt wrong to break the silence. His brother glanced back at him.</p><p>“Somewhere to crash. This cheap motel I know, hopefully,” he said. “And if we can’t find one that will take my fake ID, we’ll look for a shelter. If there’s one for minors with space, that is, which there might not be.”</p><p>The implications of a homeless shelter for minors did not sit well with Ben at all, but he had to ignore that if he wanted to keep his sanity. “And if there isn’t?”</p><p>“Well, there’s three of us,” he said slowly, like they weren’t going to like what he had to say. “If we have to, we’ll find a nice bench or an alleyway, and we’ll take turns keeping watch until the buses start running and we can get further away. If it were just me, I’d find a party or a club to crash, but I doubt that’ll fly here. Anyway,” he added cheerfully, pointing, “we’ll start here.”</p><p>In front of them was a seedy motel that looked more than twice as old as they were and a sign that very clearly said “No Vacancy.” </p><p>“Klaus,” Ben started, but was waved off. </p><p>“I see it,” he promised. “But we’re going to… ask anyway. Stay out here so we don’t have to pay for three people.” He strolled into the lobby without an answer, and they sat down to rest their legs. Just when Ben started to consider going and checking he hadn’t been murdered, Klaus emerged with a key.</p><p>“Got it!” he announced cheerfully. “Well, not really, all the rooms are definitely full. But I spun a little sob story about rescuing my baby siblings from a bad situation, and you guys look pathetic, so we get to sleep in the laundry room! Also, we have to be out by ten tomorrow morning, or Doris will personally kick our asses.”</p><p>Ignoring the jab, Ben asked, “Can’t we just find a different motel? Or a shelter?” Klaus shook his head. </p><p>“We could try, but Doris says it’s a holiday weekend, and every room in the city is probably booked,” he explained. “And it’s really late, I’m not holding out hope for a shelter. There’s cots and fresh sheets, we’ll be okay.”</p><p>“What holiday?” Vanya wondered.</p><p>“The Fourth of July,” said Klaus. </p><p>Vanya scrunched up her nose. “That’s just a date.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know,” he agreed. “Apparently it’s important.”</p><p>“Doris isn’t going to like, kill us and hide our bodies in the laundry room, is she?” Ben asked warily.</p><p>“I mean, she’s seventy, and you’re a killing machine.”</p><p>He considered that for a moment. “Fine.”</p><p>Klaus led them around back, and it took a minute, but they found the door sunk into a sublevel eventually. It smelled like cat piss, which didn’t bode well for the inside, but Vanya looked ready to collapse and Ben felt about the same, so he didn’t say anything. The key let them in, and they spent a few minutes debating about which basket had the clean linens before Vanya noticed they were all dirty, and the clean ones were stashed under the cots they needed. Ben and Klaus set up three cots and let Vanya brush her teeth. There was an industrial sink, but the water smelled like rust, so she used bottled water instead. When they crawled into their beds, she used it to take her medicine and then passed the water around to share, and they stayed quiet until it was empty. </p><p>“This doesn’t feel real yet,” she whispered, looking up at the ceiling. “I feel like I’m either going to wake up and everything’s going to make sense, or it will all have been a dream.”</p><p>Ben kind of felt the same way, so he didn’t feel like refuting it. “Things will be better in the morning,” he said instead. </p><p>“And we’ll have time to figure it out,” Klaus added sleepily. </p><p>“I love you,” Vanya blurted suddenly. Ben looked over in surprise, and in the dim light of the bare lightbulbs they couldn’t figure out how to turn off, she was looking at him. “Both of you, I mean, but Ben- you died today, and I don’t think I’ve ever said it, and I just. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, so. I love you, Ben. Thank you for being my brother. I love you so much.” In the silence that followed, she added, “And I do love you, too, Klaus, sorry. I don’t mean for that to sound like an afterthought. I love you.”</p><p>It was the most sure she had sounded all night, possibly as sure as he’d ever heard her, and it hit him hard. “I love you too, Vanya,” he said, a little choked up. “I always have, and I promise that even if you didn’t say it, I knew you loved me too.” At this, her tears finally fell, so he reached over and squeezed her hand. “For the record, I also love you, Klaus,” he added, emboldened by Vanya’s confession and what they’d been through, and probably also the drugs. “I really do. Both of you. So much.”</p><p>Neither of them said anything, waiting for Klaus’ response, and just when Ben thought he wasn’t going to say anything, he finally spoke up.</p><p>“I love you guys, too,” he said, his voice tight but earnest. “I- yeah. Goodnight.” </p><p>In response, Vanya made a sound that might have been a goodnight as she wiped her eyes and burrowed under the thin blanket. </p><p>“Goodnight,” Ben whispered back. He turned to his side to face the door, listened to the breathing of his siblings evening out next to him, and fell into a dreamless sleep until morning.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>cw: canon typical violence and death talk, a lot of blood, discussions of christianity and excessive christian imagery bc i have Religious Trauma that works its way into my writing, canon typical child abuse (reginald's a plus parenting), non consensual drug use but not really, it's just ben dealing with the after effects of the morphine grace used on him, descriptions of panic attacks not by pov character. lmk if i forgot anything!</p><p>bet you thought this would be klaus pov, huh? HA. u thought wrong. part of the reason this was so late was because i ALSO thought it would be klaus pov, except klaus Knows Too Much and i couldn't write him without giving away all of the plot points that are not ready to be revealed. so we did ben again, god bless.</p><p>another reason this is late is bc i was waiting to see if elliot page said anything about vanya! if he came out and said they would be changing the character of vanya to a transmasc character, i didn't want to post a story where she wasn't, you know? but they haven't said anything, so instead i started another little story about five finding out that vanya's counterpart in the post season two 2019 is trans and then just, dealing with all that. you should check it out:D</p><p>if anyone notices all the religious imagery ive painstakingly written into this stupid story i will love u forever. ive been very into supernatural (unfortunately) as of recently and it shows. we'll make it a drinking game, anytime i blatantly compare ben to jesus, take a shot and die of alcohol poisoning. </p><p>leave me a comment pls they make my day! follow me on tumblr @fivenb for hcs, theories, and funney posts. </p><p>next chapter: "so... now what?"</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>concept vaguely inspired by When The Moon Laughs by Lady_Origami! hujwernoo also deserves a shoutout because i simply love their fics and i am inspired by their characterization. </p><p>this is my first fic ive ever uploaded to ao3! i plan to update every monday. thanks for reading, give me a comment if you enjoyed!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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